John Adams

New York Daily News

Writers Kirk Ellis and Michelle Ashford do justice to McCullough's narration, and director Tom Hooper has a straightforward style that gives flesh-and-blood dimension to names from history books. Best of all are two extraordinary performances at the center: Paul Giamatti as Adams and Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen

Credit for building drama goes to screenwriter Kirk Ellis ("Into the West") and actor Paul Giamatti ("Sideways"). His intellectual, vain Adams is a reluctant rebel, tentative in his support of an American revolution, wary of insurgency and mob rule and defender of the tenets of American democracy.

San Jose Mercury NewsCharlie McCollum

It manages to be a rousing piece of filmmaking, a fascinating character study and a largely accurate presentation of the time when America was born.

Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker

Who says TV doesn't make history thought-provokingly exciting?

TV GuideMatt Roush

John Adams, based on David McCullough's acclaimed biography, is as sumptuous and satisfying as TV gets: gorgeously produced, marvelously acted and written with a sense of high drama amid generous displays of wit.

Hollywood ReporterBarry Garron

This handsome miniseries is praiseworthy on many levels--as history, as entertainment and as a way to bring to life for new generations a sense of the sacrifice and heroism needed to establish the U.S.

LA WeeklyRobert Abele

A rich, intelligent and often moving miniseries.

Baltimore SunDavid Zurawik

John Adams, a $100 million-plus production about the life and times of America's second president, is one of the most compelling miniseries of the decade.

Washington PostTom Shales

John Adams is the kind of classily intelligent production that can be happily recommended to everybody. The filmmakers, including executive producer Tom Hanks, have attempted to re-create and enliven history--and they succeed grandly.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

The monumental production is worth bragging about.

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

Ellis has used Adams' works to create a wondrously full and nuanced portrait of the man, which is brought fully to life by Paul Giamatti.

Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan

Both the book and the miniseries sketch admirably human portraits of historical figures such as Adams, Jefferson and Franklin.

New York MagazineJohn Leonard

We’re in excellent company, from the Boston Massacre to the Declaration of Independence to Adams’s plenipotentiary missions to Versailles and the Court of St. James to his unsought but extremely gratifying vice-presidency in the first Washington administration.

Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf Smith

It is not an exaggeration to say that the effect is of opening a treasure chest and being showered with its riches.

Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert

It is reverent enough, and profoundly heroic; and yet it is a living, breathing piece of work that brings American history down to earth.

New York PostAdam Buckman

Though the miniseries represents a compressed and not entirely accurate history, it is moving enough to remind us of the sacrifices made by Adams and a great many other people to form a republic against almost impossible odds.

Chicago Sun-TimesMisha Davenport

While John Adams succeeds as entertainment, it utterly fails as a history lesson.

SlateTroy Patterson

Ben Franklin (Tom Wilkinson ) enlivens the painterly prettiness and dutiful solemnity of John Adams with a healthy sense of the vulgar, as in the vernacular, as in the native voice of America.

SalonHeather Havrilesky

Far from epic, John Adams is a biopic as intense and moody as the man himself.

VarietyBrian Lowry

The adaptation is meticulous almost to a fault, including a fidelity to language and accents (a hybrid between British and American) that initially appears to handcuff some of the cast --beginning, most glaringly, with Giamatti, fresh off his turn as a jollier icon in "Fred Claus."

The New YorkerJill Lepore

At its best, the storytelling itself manages to accommodate a sense of historical contingency.

Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker

The production, based on David McCullough's biography, unfolds as a lavish, sometimes stilted history lesson. The private story of the Adams family is more intriguing and fresh.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

Sadly, in this elaborately produced, incredibly well-intentioned seven-part HBO miniseries adaptation of the book, Adams recedes once again, outshone not just by his more famous peers but also by just about every minor character.

The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley

John Adams is the weakest part of John Adams.

Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara

Unfortunately, so smitten are the creators of John Adams with historical earnestness and pedigree they seem to have forgotten how to tell a good story.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

But this is an epic drama on HBO, correct? So is it Giamatti or Adams himself who will make viewers wish for a swifter and less pedantic version on the History Channel?

Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall

There are moments when John Adams stirs up the passion its author clearly had for the subject -- Adams firing off a rifle in the middle of a battle at sea with a British warship, the first public reading of the Declaration, George Washington (David Morse, in the second-best piece of casting other than Giamatti) whispering his oath of office at his inauguration -- but too often it's just as muddy and dull as its subject was accused of being.