Turn: Washington’s Spies – The Complete First Season (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD) – The Revolutionary War was launched with a declaration of independence and fought for the ideal of self-determination and democratic representation. By any measure it was unprecedented and it gave birth to the first sustained democracy in the world (despite D.W. Griffith’s insistence that the Civil War as the Birth of the Nation), yet there are fewer dramatic portraits of the war in movies or on TV than practically any other American conflict, and fewer still that stand as significant productions in their own right: John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk, the HBO miniseries John Adams, and… I’m sure there are others, but none jump to mind.
Turn from AMC (the cable network of Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad) doesn’t quite jump to the top of the list, at least based on the initial season, but it is an intelligent show with a novel approach: it’s built around the civilian spy network supplying intelligence to the revolutionaries under the noses of the occupying British soldiers. This is historical drama, not documentary, but it is based on the true story of the Abraham Woodhull, the head of the real-life Culper Spy Ring in New York City and Long Island. Jamie Bell plays Woodhull, a farmer in Setauket, New York, who sells his produce on the black market to both sides while committing to neither until he’s recruited by an old friend, Continental Army officer Ben Talmadge (Seth Numrich), to use his smuggling routes to pass messages. The one-time favor turns into a full-time commitment and puts him on the opposite side of the conflict from his father (Kevin McNally), the town magistrate and a dedicated British loyalist, and in partnership with his childhood sweetheart Anna Strong (Heather Lind), whose husband was sentenced to certain death aboard a British slave ship for a crime he didn’t commit.
In a TV culture of anti-heroes and compromised protagonists, this is a fairly straightforward conflict: there are a few honorable Brits (notably Major Hewlett, the garrison commandeer played by Burn Gorman) but far more of them are brutal and sadistic, while the rebel sympathizers may be conflicted but are ultimately on the side of their neighbors. The show has its share of romantic and dramatic complications, especially as Woodhull contrives to carry information through British territory to the rebel forces while posing publically as a loyalist, and it’s light on action and spectacle. It takes some time for the story to get any traction, but when, about halfway through the season, George Washington arrives to discuss the fledgling spy network with Talmadge, the show offers a crash course in state of the art spycraft, circa 1776. That’s a fascinating history lesson that gives scope to the personal drama and illustrates just how novel a civilian espionage circle was in warfare. As the season develops, it also takes on the issue of slavery, though while it shows the hypocrisy of the British (who free the slaves only to make them indentured soldiers in their fight) it’s frustratingly quiet when it comes to exploring the colonists’ relationship to the reality of slavery and shies away from seeing the war through the eyes of the blacks who, in the event of American victory, would remain enslaved.
What I find most interesting is the portrait of conflicted loyalties among the Americans. Friends, neighbors, even family members cannot necessarily be trusted, but that doesn’t make them enemies. Woodhull secretly defies his father’s allegiances but never his father, who he loves and protects through the conflict, and he keeps his activities secret from his wife (Meegan Warner), who suspects something is going on but isn’t sure what. That’s the real human story of the show, not the personal conflicts between Woodhull and sneering, sadistic British officer Simcoe (Samuel Roukin) or Talmadge and Scot mercenary Robert Rogers (Angus Macfadyen) or the renewed passions between Woodhull and Anna Strong, flamed by the danger of their missions.
There are also fun bits of history woven through here, like the crossing of the Delaware from the point of view of a soldier at the back of the makeshift armada (Washington is never seen) and a rousing rendition of a British drinking song over dinner with British officers, which became the tune to The Star Spangled Banner. These are dropped in without comment, nudging the viewer to dig into their American history (Wikipedia should get a workout while watching the episodes).
10 episodes on Blu-ray and DVD, with two very brief featurettes that are really no more than promotional pieces and about 25 minutes of deleted scenes.
The second season begins in April.
Maude: The Complete Series (Shout! Factory, DVD) – The first spin-off of Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family took the opposite direction from blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker. Maude Findlay (played by Bea Arthur), Edith Bunker’s feminist cousin, is a liberal, liberated, outspoken modern woman who isn’t shy about proclaiming and defending her views. She’s married to her fourth husband, appliance store owner Walter (Bill Macy), and living in a suburban home with her divorced daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau) and grandson. Housekeeper Florida Evans (Esther Rolle), a character that would spin-off into the series Good Times, is hired in the third episode, the same one where Maude delivers her signature line for the first time: “God’ll get you for that, Walter.” She could be abrasive and combative, but she was passionate and that passion is there in the marriage.
Like All in the Family, the show took on political and social issues, including race, equal rights, the sexual revolution, alcoholism, therapy, and in a landmark two-part episode, abortion, while satirizing liberal piety and double-standards. But along with the politics, often in bantering arguments with their conservative neighbor (Conrad Bain), the show also took on marriage, divorce, and adult relationships in the modern culture. You can see it as a time capsule, very much of its time, but it’s also well-written and driven by strongly-written characters, especially Arthur as Maude, whose spiky, sardonic delivery helped define the show. After Rolle left the series, British actress Hermione Baddeley joined the cast as their new maid, a vulgar, hard-drinking foil for Maude, and the final episodes send Maude to Washington D.C. and a future in politics.
It’s a landmark show and this well-produced box set presents all six seasons and 141 episodes on 18 discs, plus a bonus disc with extras. The episodes are mastered from videotape originals and have the soft colors and soft images of pre-HD videotape, but the video quality is quite good considering the limitations of seventies video technology. The bonus disc features Maude’s two appearances on All in the Family—the episode that introduced the character and the series pilot—and two unaired episodes of Maude, plus three featurettes.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD