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Does it still count as TV if it's just a DVD?

Well anyway, I was watching that HBO series of some years ago - John Adams - great revisionist American History - except for the wobbly camera operating. I don't know why they did that - the jittery style. I always hate it, except in newsreels.

Whatever. To the point - it occurred to me that this portrayal of John Adams had another ironic contemporary sub-text - (apart from the much noted disillusionment with constitutional/enlightenment ideals) and that is that the actor playing Adams - Paul Giamatti - looks uncannily like Homer Simpson!

Imagine Homer in a periwig and you have Giamatti's Adams - especially the pursed mouth!

Now you may be thinking well that's probably how Adams actually looked - but not according to this portrait of America's second President. I prefer to think that this is a subconscious projection on the part of the makers, in order to cast Adams as a sympathetic everyman. They unwittingly comply with a popular stereotype and remake the dour lawyer and revolutionary in the image of Homer Simpson! Oh the irony!

I think the Simpsons should throw a guest spot to Giamatti in acknowledgement. The guy's face is made for a cartoon.

Okay so I'm not the first one to notice the similarity.

I like Paul G's voice a lot. i think that series kind of dragged but i enjoyed the courtroom bits at the start and the White House in a building site later.
The guy who played George Washington was the actor who had that brilliant cameo in The Hurt Locker, "spoken like a wild man" etc. and he was the best thing in that film in my opinion.

The series did go on forever. I think that has something to do with HBO's programing formats. But the writers also had a quite a few axes to grind. The treatment of Benjamin Franklin is quite outrageous.