Facts Are Overrated: 'Sons of Liberty'

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george washington sons of liberty

Sons of Liberty, the History Channel's dramatic series about the events leading up to the American Revolution, is out now on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD. The show features big production values (even though it substitutes Romania for Colonial America) and an impressive cast that features Dean Norris (Hank from Breaking Bad) as Benjamin Franklin , Henry Thomas (E.T.) as John Adams, Jason O'Mara as George Washington and focuses on Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia movies) as Sam Adams and Ryan Eggold (The Blacklist) as Dr. Joseph Warren.

The program is 100% created for an audience that believes that costume dramas and the American Revolution are boring. The colonists seem more like the bootleggers from Boardwalk Empire than the noble idealists that put everyone to sleep in high school and the chase scenes more like the video game Assassin's Creed 3 than anything you'd see at a Bunker Hill reenactor event.

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If you're really into American history, you might get tripped up by the liberties taken with the facts in pursuit of an exciting tale (there's an excellent and detailed list of ways the show ignores the facts here at the Journal of the American Revolution website). If you can watch without getting too hung up on the facts, Sons of Liberty is never boring and might prove useful in getting middle-school boys off the Xbox and give them a chance to spark an interest in the real story.

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We've got a documentary clip below where actors Michael Raymond-James (Paul Revere) and Ryan Eggold (Dr. Joseph Warren) join director Kari Skoglund in describing the recreation of the Battle of Bunker Hill in Romania.

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