As I have been working my way through the movies of American history, one of the entries is actually a miniseries. When you look at the cultural landscape around American history, you end up making some pretty massive jumps. There just are not that many good movies about the American Revolution. Really, the best we have is Hamilton, which is not all that great.
So how do you deal with the first fifty years of America’s life? Well, you watch a TV show that follows those first fifty years through John Adams. It takes you from Adams defending the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre all the way to what may be the most romantic possible death of one man alongside another man in American history: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dying on the same day, July 4, 1826. Spoilers.
The TV show is beautifully done. The costumes are great. It really does make you feel like you are in the past. But unlike the kind of period pieces that I imagine are beloved by women for their beautiful dresses and romantic behavior, there is none of that here. Most of the show is John Adams, played by Paul Giamatti, looking a little pissed off, a little sour, and really pretty depressed. And it genuinely makes you think: damn, John Adams’s life was hard.
I have to tell you, there is not one episode that is not at least a little bit of a bummer. It is exciting, but you are never really happy for him. And I think that is largely the point.
To return to my comparison, this is a dad’s period piece, a period piece for dads.
One thing you notice quickly, if you have done any reading in American history, is that large parts of the dialogue are not really invented dialogue at all. They are characters speaking lines drawn from the letters these people actually wrote to each other. That is how the show gets across the debates and ideas that went into the founding of America. It communicates where one person was coming from, where another person was coming from, and it often does so through their real correspondence.
One great thing about the show is that it also gives you perfect fodder to ask ChatGPT or Claude, “Was any of this real?” Sometimes it is honestly hard to stomach, and you find yourself wondering why they included something, or whether it was invented for drama. More often than not, though, your AI will come back and say: yes, this really happened. The vibes may be slightly adjusted, and some details may be moved around, but the underlying event was very close to what you saw on screen. That makes it a really great way to learn American history.
So I would definitely recommend it if you have some time to kill and are willing to watch slower television from before everything got hyper-animated around 2008. If that sounds appealing, you should absolutely watch this.