TV Series Review: ‘Sons of Liberty,’ From the Streets of Boston to 1776

It is always bad news for an oppressive government when the wealthy elites start making common cause with the drunken rabble.

It is always bad news for an oppressive government when the wealthy elites start making common cause with the drunken rabble. Such was the case at the Second Continental Congress. Bostonians Sam Adams and John Hancock had little in common, but they both loathed having to pay British taxes. Together with their fellow patriots, they changed history and ultimately founded our great nation.

Their early skirmishes on the streets of Boston and the campaign to unify all 13 colonies are dramatized in the History Channel’s three-night miniseries “Sons of Liberty.”

Not surprisingly, Sam Adams was a terrible tax collector. When his leniency evolves into outright insurrection, Loyalist Governor Thomas Hutchinson calls for his head. For the sake of stability, the wealthy merchant John Hancock tries to play peacemaker, paying off Adams’s debts and convincing the future revolutionary leader to cool his rhetoric.

However, Hutchinson soon radicalizes the moderate Hancock by clamping down on both his legitimate mercantile and smuggling operations (which were largely indistinguishable in duty-despising 1760s Massachusetts). Tensions build until blood is finally shed in 1770, concluding the first night with the Boston Massacre.

Frankly, the best part of 'Sons' is the way it celebrates the idiosyncrasies and unruliness of the early patriots.