“Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” John Adams Miniseries Review

Director Tom Hooper screenwriter Kirk Ellis teamed with HBO to create a mini-series adaptation of David McCullough’s biography of John Adams. The gigantic scope of McCullough’s book suits itself well for a multi-part telling rather than a two or three-hour film, which would have felt like a greatest hits version of the biography. The book and the mini-series follow one of the most important thinkers and shapers of the United States of America beginning at the Boston Massacre and ending with his death. The miniseries’ scope is large, following Adams from his farm in Massachusetts, to the Continental Congresses in Philadelphia, to his work in Europe as one of the new nation’s primary diplomats, to his work as Vice President and President of the union, and finally to his retirement, again, back at his family farm in Massachusetts.

Overall John Adams makes good on its high aims of recounting history and exploring the characters who shaped this nation during some of its most tenuous moments. Ellis’ scripts appear faithful to the time while remaining accessible for modern ears. The characters express their thoughts and emotions believably without resorting to annoying soliloquies or civics lectures. Ellis must have had the most fun with the second installment, “Independence,” which shows Adams defending the product of Thomas Jefferson’s work, the Declaration of Independence. In the biography McCullough writes that no transcript or record of Adams’ speech before the Congress was made — since these meetings were supposedly fairly secretive — but that it was likely the finest speech he had made in his career. Because no record exists, Ellis had free reign to craft Adams’ words.