John Adams is a wonderful, well-acted, well-written period series. It covers many important historical events and people, and does most of them pretty good justice. It is a bit slow and focused on dialogue, which I understand will not be everyone's favorite, but I quite like it.
My one complaint is the excessive use of handheld/shaky-cam. Especially in the first 2 episodes, it is extremely distracting. It makes sense to use shaky-cam... to an extent... in action scenes to help convey chaos- Saving Private Ryan is probably the best example of this. However, in literally anything else, it adds nothing to the story. Its use as an art is I think totally aggravating and annoying. From a storytelling perspective, I can see how it would make sense if trying to portray how a protagonist sees/experiences the world if they had Parkinson's disease or the like. Here, it is so overused as to drag the viewer out of the scene, if they are at all susceptible to it. For me, I just can't help but notice it, and in my view it ruins the viewing experience of what should be an engrossing drama. I recall watching this series when it first came out, and am now revisiting it 13 years later wondering why I hadn't done so earlier. Ah. Now I remember why.
My one complaint is the excessive use of handheld/shaky-cam. Especially in the first 2 episodes, it is extremely distracting. It makes sense to use shaky-cam... to an extent... in action scenes to help convey chaos- Saving Private Ryan is probably the best example of this. However, in literally anything else, it adds nothing to the story. Its use as an art is I think totally aggravating and annoying. From a storytelling perspective, I can see how it would make sense if trying to portray how a protagonist sees/experiences the world if they had Parkinson's disease or the like. Here, it is so overused as to drag the viewer out of the scene, if they are at all susceptible to it. For me, I just can't help but notice it, and in my view it ruins the viewing experience of what should be an engrossing drama. I recall watching this series when it first came out, and am now revisiting it 13 years later wondering why I hadn't done so earlier. Ah. Now I remember why.