Time Wasting

I took another look at the Johns Adams series over the weekend.  Another disappointment.  I do not think the acting is bad, but I find the script just dull, and entirely too talky.  The characters were not interesting in the first three episodes, and the story was all in the telling -- not much of anything happened on the screen.  The Constitutional Congress scenes were, for example, awful: speech after speech with no sense of the world around.  I stopped in from time to time on other episodes, and it was always the same.  Didactic speeches and poses struck.  Maybe I just don't care about the characters. 

A good contrast is with Rome, another HBO effort.  There were speeches there too, but the characters did things as well.  The speeches led into events, did not merely recite them.  It as also interesting because there was a greater range of characters, it was not merely the high in conflict with one another.  The Tudors is just the high and mighty prancing about and indulging themselves.  That show is difficult to listen to.  But the clothes are lovely -- I watch every week for the clothing.  But who cares about any of the people; they are so small, metaphorically.  In John Adams, the folk are small in both senses.