[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
HISTORY gets dramatic this weekend with Sons of Liberty, a three-night scripted (yay!) miniseries event starring Ben Barnes (Seventh Son), Henry Thomas, Ryan Eggold (The Blacklist), Kevin Ryan (Copper), Rafe Spall (Prometheus), Michael Raymond-James (Terriers), Jason O’Mara, Dean Norris (Under the Dome), Martin Csokas (Covert Affairs), and Emily Berrington (24: Live Another Day). We. Are. So. There. If they’d figured out a way to include Tom Mison, we’d have to be medicated.
The six-hour Revolutionary War era miniseries follows Sam Adams (Barnes), John Adams (Thomas), Paul Revere (Raymond-James), John Hancock (Spall), and Dr. Joseph Warren (Eggold) as they “band together in secrecy to change the course of history and make America a nation.” Also look for familiar names George Washington (O’Mara) and Ben Franklin (Norris). This isn’t a buttoned-down, powdered wig saga, though. Instead, it’s gritty, sprawling Gen X-type tale about young men trying to make their mark, and survive, who’ve had as much as they can take and begin to rebel under the thumb of the British, driving a new nation into a bitter war.
Filmed in Romania (cheaper, and without those pesky overhead power lines), which stands in for Boston and England, the miniseries has a multi-national cast. All six hours were helmed by Kari Skogland, who’s handled shows as varied as Vikings, The Killing, Longmire, and The Borgias. I LOVE that a woman directed this otherwise testosterone-heavy tale–onscreen, women are few and far between. The writing team of Stephen David, Zachary Herrmann, Jordan Rosenblum, and David C. White delivered HISTORY’s The World Wars last year.
The tone is pretty straightforward with the grit and the violence, plus liberal basic cable usage of “sh-t” scattered throughout. If we’re to believe this miniseries, a lot of the unrest was fueled by booze, as well. I’m not up on my history, so I can’t account for the accuracy of the version of events presented here, but I’m down with the cast assembled, and it’s certainly not like anything else on TV right now (Sleepy Hollow flashbacks not withstanding–I want Dean Norris and Tim Busfield to do a podcast or get on YouTube and discuss playing Ben Franklin).
Sons of Liberty premieres Sunday night at 9/8c and episodes two and three follow Monday and Tuesday at 9/8c.
Here are a few sneak peeks:
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