We have had our fun here with The Learning Channel, from which you learn almost nothing, and which is on an unrelenting search for its perfect program, which would be about a married couple of 600-pound little people who have 34 kids. It is now called TLC because even they know it’s not about learning any more. But The History Channel is still calling itself The History Channel and, this week, it produced the single most hilarious – and toweringly ahistorical – miniseries in the history of cable television. It was called Sons Of Liberty, and it was in three parts, each installment more sternum-crackingly laughable than the last. It purported to be about the events in Boston that led to the American Revolution. It might as well have been about ice fishing for all it had to do with those actual events. Compared to this burlesque, the musical 1776 might as well have been written by Gordon Wood.
Start right off with an actor named Ben Barnes, in the role of Samuel Adams who, at the time of these events, was a pudgy 41-year old rabble-rouser. Barnes played him as a hunky action hero, what Wolverine would have been, had he been packing flintlocks and not adamantium claws. Barnes’s Sam Adams jumps from roof to roof, punches out Redcoats, and faces down British troops at the Boston Tea Party with nothing more than his pistols and the heaving pectorals beneath his leather vest. (There is a reason why Adams was portrayed this way, and it is hugely amusing, and we’ll get to it in a minute.) Elliot from ET has grown up to be John Adams, who is endlessly concerned about his cousin, the street-fightin' man. When this whole disaster careens into the Second Continental Congress, John Adams defers to Sam. Meanwhile, John Hancock is a fop, George Washington sounds like an escapee from Goodfellas, and Thomas Jefferson barely has a cameo. (I had to look closely at the closing credits to make sure he wasn’t identified as Red-Haired Delegate or something.) There also is love object Dr. Joseph Warren canoodling with the Jersey Girl whom British General Thomas Gage married. (Margaret Kemble Gage may in fact have spied on her husband on Warren’s behalf. Historians are divided on the question. But there seems little historical evidence for bodice-ripping, heavy breathing, and the throwing back of the head.) The acting, by the way, starts out at summer-stock mediocre and disappears quickly into the abyss. Check out Paul Revere, beating the tar out of four Royal Marines.
There are so many macro things about the production that are so very, comically wrong, that it seems almost unkind to point out that a lot of the dialogue is hopelessly unstuck in time. At one point, Sam calls for a “boycott” of Tory businesses, a word that did not come into use until 1880, during the Irish Land War as a tactic aimed at Captain Charles Boycott, a brutal land agent in Mayo. Compared to this production, the guy who turns up at conservative rallies dressed as Button Gwinnett is completely authentic. I know that the movie Selma is getting hit hard for historical accuracy, but this series proves that, if you’re going to put history through the wood chipper, put it all the way through the wood chipper. Watch it. Laugh your tricorn off. Remember that it’s being run on The History Channel, and laugh even harder.
(Oh, yeah. The reason that Samuel Adams is turned into an X-Man probably has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the whole project is sponsored by the Sam Adams brewing people, I’m sure.)
Out in Arizona today, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell gave his annual State Of The Game press conference and, as expected, hilarity ensued. Magary watched, so you didn’t have to, but Goodell apparently set a record for passing the buck that eclipsed any record set by Dan Marino at passing the football. However, I tend to agree with those who believe that the following is the most egregiously barefaced non-fact of them all.
