The History Channel has been known for creating historical miniseries detailing some of the largest turning points in history. These series include Vikings, The Bible, Hatfield’s and McCoy’s and The World Wars. They have decided to move forward with this style of miniseries as The History Channel has introduced Texas Rising to its audience.
Texas Rising gives an in depth look at the Texas Revolution against Mexico. There are two main groups in the series, the Texas Rangers and the Mexican Army. The Rangers are lead by General Sam Huston who is played by Bill Paxton, Jack Hays who is played by Max Theriot and Bigfoot Wallace who is played by Robert Baker. The Mexican Army is lead by their brutal leader Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna who is played by Oliver Martinez.
The five part series starts after the Rangers defeat at the Alamo instead of just putting you at the beginning of the revolution. To fill the void for background there is a two minute slide show stating characters and their roles in the revolution thus far; it also gives an interesting historical rundown of the revolution. This is not a bad idea due to the fact that every episode in the series is 90-120 minutes already.
The whole series is shot in a wide screen format and even on an HD setting there is a black border around the screen giving a vignette look to the series. This gives a very interesting perspective; it forces the eye to focus on the whole shot and what is going on at that very moment in the episode. If this series were to be shot in a full screen format the eye of the viewer would dart from object to object causing confusion.
The acting in the series is solid. It is probably the best out of all of History Channels miniseries’. The acting ties right in with the casting which was also done well. Actors seem to have stuck well to their characters. The accents for both the Mexican Army and the Texans are fantastic. The Texan accent was not a generic southern accent but instead had some Texan slang in it. The post battle scenes were great. It actually looked like a battle had taken place, not like other series where it would look like everyone was just taking naps on the ground.
The sound effects were better than other comparable series. The gun shots were loud and deep, but not over done. Any explosions you would hear sounded as if they were fireworks, rather than just an amplified gun shot.
Now with every historical series there has to be something historically inaccurate. Texas Rising is in no way, shape or form different in that way. The series was filmed in Durango, Mexico and while this may seem like a good place to film a historical series about something that happened in the south-west, it is not. The south-east part of Texas where the revolution took place is not covered in hills and cliffs. It is instead quite flat. It really did a good job with countering any minor historical inaccuracies with great facts about the revolution. The series did however get things right for example Sam Huston did give the direct order to blow up the Alamo.
Overall this series is one of the better ones that the History Channel has put out in the past few years.
If you missed this great miniseries giving us an intense look Texas Revolution you can find it on the History Channels website.
