The American Revolution is a notoriously tough sell for movies and TV. Maybe it's the wigs, tricornered hats and that funny way of making an "s" look like an "f."
I always figured they'd take the old tongue-twister and say, "Fee fells feafells by the feafore," which might make you think twice about a Founding Father.But historical documentaries are doing quite nicely on PBS, and here comes "Liberty! The American Revolution," a major six-hour series Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. (In Utah, it airs each night at 8 p.m. on Ch. 7.)
The exclamation point could be a final touch in the effort to lend excitement to a subject that bores so many viewers, sort of like writing "Utah!" on that state's license plates.
Sure enough, "Liberty!" gets off to a stodgy start. The introduction by ABC newsman Forrest Sawyer is too long and too starchy, the ensuing setup about life and loyalties in the 1760s won't bring people to the edges of their seats, and then, unavoidably, there are all the thrills and spills of the Stamp Acts. Actually the spills were the Boston Tea Party.
But "Liberty!" comes around. Once the English and the colonists start firing muskets at each other, you truly get a sense of a revolution revolving not only around high ideals, but also high personal stakes.
The war - about which most of us can profess almost total ignorance - is a surprise. The program's producers take pains to present it as something other than a powdered-wig affair.
For the most part, the rebellious colonists fought a hit-and-run guerrilla war. George Washington fought nine battles, and he won only three of them. There were atrocities, especially when the war moved chaotically into the southern colonies. And in the north, a fifth of the continental army eventually was made up of black men.
We can thank British arrogance, along with French military aid, for our independence. For some reason, many Americans today think an English accent confers keen intelligence on its speaker. Those people would do well to watch "Liberty!" The British habitually underestimated their patriot foes, alienated the American population and bungled their war strategy. They won the battles but lost the war for hearts and minds.
One of the delights of "Liberty!" is the on-screen presence of several modern British historians, a few of whom still seem miffed by the war's outcome.
Among them is N.A.M. Rodger, who dryly dismisses Thomas Paine as "the kind of person you're embarrassed to have on your side." (Paine's words, nevertheless, changed history.)
Rodger is also contemptuous of British General John Burgoyne, the dandy who was defeated at Saratoga. Burgoyne, he sniffs, was "a better playwright than general, actually. His farces are still worth listening to."
Produced by Catherine Allan ("Hoop Dreams") and presented by PBS station KTCA-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul, "Liberty!" takes a heap of liberties.
Documentaries aren't supposed to make extensive use of costumed actors. "Liberty!" does; a few dozen actors, playing everyone from common soldiers to King George III, sit in front of the camera and address the camera directly.
Viewers are told that the words spoken by these actors - most are from the New York stage - come directly from letters, diaries and other records from the era.
Not exactly. The audience isn't informed that the words are often given a modern brushup by Ronald Blumer, who wrote "Liberty!" So personages from the 18th century sound pretty much like us, short of calling each other "dude." The method solves one problem but creates another. The closer these figures get to us, the less authentic they are.
And there are "re-enactors," mainly folks who belong to the Brigade of the American Revolution and love to don their 18th century getups. They're the ersatz soldiers who march and shoot their way through the production, and few of them look like the real thing.
These are risky measures for a PBS program that presumably is sworn to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But I'm willing to forgive the gimmicks, except for the rewritten commentaries, if "Liberty!" can convey a palpable feel for neglected history.
On balance, it does. It's interesting to hear one of the historians say that precisely because it succeeded so well, the American Revolution doesn't share the revolutionary aura of the French and Russian revolutions. "Liberty!" can set that notion straight.
Here, at last, the beau geste of landholders pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to a fragile cause takes on a flesh and blood urgency.