John Adams

I recently finished watching the seven part miniseries about John Adams, based on the biography by David McCullough, starring Paul Giamatti as the blustery second president of the US. I applaud the high minded content and attention to detail that has come to define HBO productions (see Band of Brothers, The Sopranos, The Wire, Rome, Deadwood, etc.). However, despite the dramatization of some of the nation’s most famous historical moments, it often came across a bit dry. As much as I like Giamatti, his physicality and countenance seems wholly modern to me. Laura Linney, on the other hand, completely sold me on her Abigail Adams, despite the fact that I watched her in The Savages, where she plays a completely modern New York bohemian. David Morse as George Washington, Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson and even Tom Wilkerson as Ben Franklin seemed to have been well cast, too.