Robert P. Laurence

San Diego Television

John Adams gets his due on HBO

By Robert P. Laurence
Posted on Mar 13 2008
Last updated Mar 13 2008

It's been 25 long years since Americans sat transfixed in front of their TV sets watching "The Thorn Birds."

Thirty-one years since "Roots," 19 years since "Lonesome Dove."

The big, sprawling, expansive and expensive network miniseries has become as much a symbol of the past as Alan Shepard's golf shot on the moon. Reality TV, the proliferation of cable and satellite channels, the many distractions luring viewers to other places, have all combined to splinter the audience into ever-smaller shards. Ratings that today qualify a series for a place in TV's Top Ten would have meant cancellation a decade or two ago.

So the massive miniseries intended as much for prestige as for mass consumption has become an endangered species, seldom worth the money it costs to produce, found only on rare occasion these days on cable. Robert Duvall's epic Western "Broken Trail" revived the tradition briefly a couple of years ago on AMC.

Now HBO takes up the baton with the beautifully rendered but occasionally static and pedantic "John Adams," starring Paul Giamatti as the nation's first vice-president and second president. Taken from David McCullough's 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, the film spans seven hours and was shot in Colonial Williamsburg and Richmond, Va., with Budapest filling in for London, Paris and Holland. (Parts 1 and 2 – the first three hours – debut at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 16, with frequent repeats through April 20. Part 3 begins at 9 p.m. March 23, also with frequent repeats through April 20.)

It's a gorgeous and gritty production and a big one, an old-fashioned miniseries in all the best ways. Even HBO’s publicity material hearkens back to old times in spirit, boasting that the crew numbered 471 in Virginia, 144 in Hungary, that 4,200 extras worked in Virginia, another 1,500 in Hungary.

More importantly, Giamatti, perhaps not the obvious first choice to play the least-celebrated of the Founding Fathers, is more than up to the job. Adams was not the handsomest of the founders, and the round-faced, balding Giamatti resembles him closely enough. But Adams, as described by McCullough, was not only smarter than most people, he was always ready to remind his fellows of it. Modesty was not one of his virtues.

Giamatti seethes with scarcely concealed energy, glaring at the world through slitted eyes as if on the verge of losing all patience with anyone who fails to see how right he is. Adams denies he’s ambitious, but a friend reminds him frankly that he did not move his family and his law practice from the country to the city so that he would “go unnoticed in Boston.”

On the other hand, he was also smart enough to realize his arrogance could hurt him politically. Believing himself the wrong man for the job, Adams asks Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) to write the Declaration of Independence. “I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular," he reminds Jefferson. "You’re very much otherwise. I have a great opinion of the elegance of your pen, and none at all of my own.”

Later, there’s quite a lovely scene of Adams, Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin together editing Jefferson’s first draft, reading it aloud, approving one phrase, changing another, deleting a word here, adding one there, three earnest and skilled wordsmiths working as one toward a common goal. Tom Wilkinson plays an excellent Franklin, but the casting of David Morse as George Washington was a mistake. At 54, Morse in this production looks a weary 70. Washington was a robust 44 in 1776.

Laura Linney plays Adams’ wife, Abigail, who was separated from her husband for years at a time as he traveled in service to his country. They wrote frequently and their letters today tell us of a lifelong love affair that never lost its passion. Further, Adams valued Abigail’s political counsel and her advice frequently guided his decisions.

But those long separations make for unsatisfying drama, as the scenario shifts back and forth from Adams’ adventures in statecraft to his wife’s stewardship of the home front and Linney is left to play the difficult role of a woman in love with a man who’s not there.

Abigail’s life was anything but an easy one, though. She faced many crises alone with their children, including a smallpox epidemic. Which brings me to one scene I could have done without. Inoculations were, to say the least, primitive in the 18th Century, so we’re treated to a lingering closeup of a doctor scraping poisonous goop from the pustules of a smallpox victim, then plastering it into open cuts in the arms of Mrs. Adams and her children.

Admittedly, a strong interest in American history will be a big help when watching “John Adams.” Films dealing with the American revolution have a long history of box office failure (Maybe it’s the three-cornered hats?), and this one may face the same resistance from the audience. The debates can run long at times and too often it seems that the personal drama is intended primarily as a sweetener to help the medicine go down.

Still, it’s not a bad thing to remember the birth pangs that accompanied the creation of a new country and a new form of government, and the man whose critical contributions to the process have for too long been overlooked by history.

Most of all, “John Adams” reminds us that once upon a time our nation’s leaders were serious men motivated more by sincere concern for the common good than their own venal interests, men willing to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in order to do what was right.

About the author: Robert P. Laurence was television critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 21 years. He previously wrote about politics, jazz, rock 'n' roll and all manner of news. He graduated in journalism from San Francisco State University, and earned an M.A. in political science at San Jose State. He's lived in San Diego since 1971.
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