History Channel series 'America: The Story of Us' sells us short

By TOM SHALES The Washington Post

Its intentions seem basically worthy, its execution moderately adroit, its scope ambitious and its pictures? Oooh, pretty!

What more, one well might wonder, could be asked of America: TheStory of Us, a whiz-bang, high-tech documentary miniseries airing in six two-hour blocks starting at 8 tonight on cable's History Channel?

Actually, we don't have to wonder, because it's sometimes annoyingly obvious. Crucial scarcities include creative imagination, narrative eloquence and dramatic impact. Some conceptual sophistication would have been welcome, and a good deal less huffery, puffery and gimmickry.

What America could most use less of: clichés, trite little phrases that come at you like black balls from a musket. Here those tend to come in slow motion, right at your face, when the guns are being fired ostensibly at the British by our valorous foreparents organized into – what else? – "a ragtag militia."

These slo-mo muskets are but part of a vast battery of special effects deployed to make this 12-part American history lesson visually and kinetically compelling, but snappy visuals should supplement a clever, eloquent script – not replace it.

The clichés are beyond plentiful; they're everywhere. America's Civil War was, it seems, "the fight for the soul of a nation," though an attempt to prevent violence at Harpers Ferry was a matter of "too little, too late."

Maybe everything that happens changes the course of something. Or maybe nothing that happens changes the course of anything. Americaperhaps should have been titled, with a nod to George W. Bush, "Stay the Course," but the broader, more generic title America is probably more appropriate – sadly enough – to such a vast, bland and dramatically inert undertaking.America:

The Story of Us