{"id":25522,"date":"2017-09-19T01:20:08","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T05:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=25522"},"modified":"2017-09-18T22:11:45","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T02:11:45","slug":"outlander-americans-best-historical-dramas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2017\/09\/outlander-americans-best-historical-dramas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two Best Historical Dramas on TV"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This month my wife and I have been enjoying new episodes of\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Outlander, the first in that series since last July<\/em><\/span>. So it seemed like a good time to dip into my archives and update\u00a0<\/span>my argument<\/span><\/a> for that cable TV drama and FX\u2019s <\/span><\/em>The Americans<\/span> as exemplifying <\/span>the four criteria<\/span><\/a> by which this historian assesses historical films:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\n
Are they entertaining? <\/span>(understanding that there are multiple meanings to the verb \u201centertain\u201d)<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n
Are they truthful? <\/span>(but in terms of \u201cverisimilitude\u201d more than \u201caccuracy\u201d)<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n
Are the makers genuinely interested in the past on its own terms? <\/span>(or, for example, are they just using it as a dimension of the set)<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n
Do they inspire further historical study, or even historical thinking? <\/span>(e.g., do they help us think about historical context and complexity, change over time and continuity, etc.)<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\nIn case you\u2019re not familiar with The Americans\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0Outlander<\/em>, let me summarize characters and plots that are, by their nature, overly confusing:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Based on the books by Diana Gabaldon, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Outlander_(TV_series)\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Outlander<\/span><\/i><\/a> stars Irish actress Caitriona Balfe as Claire Randall, a British army nurse visiting Scotland with her historian husband Frank just after World War II. Through a mechanism best not thought about too much, she travels back in time to the Scottish Highlands in the 1740s, on the eve of the Jacobite revolt that culminated in the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/history\/scottishhistory\/union\/trails_union_culloden.shtml\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">disastrous battle of Culloden<\/span><\/a>. Saved from a sadistic English officer named Black Jack Randall (who \u2014 coincidences! \u2014 is one of Frank\u2019s ancestors), Claire marries and then falls in love with a Highlander named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). While mostly set in the 18th century, the story occasionally moves back into the 20th, where Frank searches for \u2014\u00a0and eventually finds \u2014 his disappeared wife.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Americans_(2013_TV_series)\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Americans<\/span><\/i><\/a> tells the story of Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), two Soviet spies in the early 1980s, when d\u00e9tente dissolved into the renewed Cold War tensions of the Reagan presidency. Deployed as \u201csleeper agents\u201d who blend in perfectly with their suburban American surroundings, Elizabeth and Philip work undercover at great risk to themselves (an FBI agent \u2014 coincidences! \u2014 moves in next door in the pilot episode) and the many people they kill. It\u2019s also a story about a marriage that was arranged by the KGB but generates real, complicated feelings, and the Jennings\u2019 two children, Paige and Henry, play increasingly important roles as well.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n(Speaking of the \u201cmany people [the Jennings] kill\u201d\u2026 Before going any further, let me emphasize that both series live up to their TV-MA ratings. They\u2019re quite violent, include some profanity, and often feature sexual content and (especially <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i>) nudity. I think they\u2019re still excellent shows that exemplify most of my criteria, but they\u2019re not everyone\u2019s cup of tea. And the two episodes that concluded the first season of <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> featured such graphic depictions of torture and rape that even I found myself fast-forwarding regularly.)<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ll try my best to avoid spoilers, at least from the most recent season of each. That\u2019ll be easy for <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>, since my wife and I watch it on Amazon Prime, which isn\u2019t yet streaming season 5; harder for <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i>, whose third season just started.<\/span><\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Americans | Season 5: Official Trailer | FX\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HjuUkbhsI24?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nOkay, enough table-setting. So why do I think\u00a0Outlander<\/em> and The Americans<\/em>\u00a0are the best historical dramas on TV \u2014 and better than most historical films?<\/p>\n<h2>They\u2019re entertaining<\/h2>\nFirst things first: both series are\u00a0well-made, dramatically compelling diversions. <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i> has received fourteen Emmy nominations and routinely makes critics\u2019 year-end top ten lists. <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> continues to be snubbed by TV\u2019s leading award show, but has received generally glowing reviews. (It\u2019s currently at 96% \u201cfresh\u201d ratings <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/tv\/outlander\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">on the Rotten Tomatoes<\/span><\/a> critical aggregator, a point ahead of <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>.) I\u2019m particularly impressed by the acting of the two Americans<\/em> and by <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i>\u2018s Balfe and Tobias Menzies (given the dual role of Frank and Black Jack Randall).<\/span><\/p>\nThe latter series feels like it can\u2019t always escape the weaknesses of its source material, but its showrunner, Ronald D. Moore, is one of my favorite TV writers thanks to his work on Battlestar Galactica<\/em> and several iterations of Star Trek<\/em>. That might make it sound like <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> is a science fiction show, but Moore tends to minimize those elements and play it as a historical drama \u2014 set in the same place, but in two eras different from each other and our own time. It, like <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>, succeeds according to my second definition of \u201centertaining\u201d: inviting us into different pasts, and immersing us as something more than a tourist just passing through.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>They\u2019re truthful<\/h2>\nI\u2019m not concerned so much about how these series interpret the past \u201cas it actually happened.\u201d (TV series can do a bit better here, since storytellers given multiple episodes and seasons aren\u2019t as tempted to condense timelines and casts of characters as those allowed only two hours of screen time.) More so, I want historical films and TV shows to help us understand what it felt like to live in these places and cultures at these times, which requires historical verisimilitude.<\/span><\/p>\nNo doubt, this is why I prefer historical fiction to\u00a0docudramas. Presenting a film <\/span>as being \u201cbased on a true story\u201d inherently blurs the line between history and fiction. So even when it\u2019s based on considerable research and made with skill and vision, such a movie is going to ring false to historians with heightened expectations of historical accuracy. While <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i> develop their stories within the outlines of actual historical events (and include actual historical figures \u2014 and, in the latter case, actual footage from news and other media of the time), they are not trying to tell \u201ctrue stories,\u201d just truthful ones.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd by the standards of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2016\/07\/what-makes-for-the-best-historical-movies-part-1\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">what I\u2019ve called verisimilitude<\/a>, both shows do very well. I\u2019m not enough of a historian of the 18th century or Scotland to vouch for everything about <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i>. (Was King James so beloved among Scottish Catholics that they quoted his version of the English Bible instead of the Douay-Rheims?) But I\u2019m especially struck by the attention to what people wear. (Moore happens to be married to the show\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/fashion\/la-ig-adv-outlander-costumes-20160607-snap-story.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">chief costume designer<\/span><\/a>, Terry Dresbach.) In a cast discussion in New York, Heughan mentioned learning about the relatively muted color palate of the 18th century characters, which is appropriate \u2014 the notion of bright red tartans is a 19th century invention (of Sir Walter Scott or later Victorians, I\u2019m not sure). Moore explained that he added a scene to an early episode in which Claire puts on her new clothes for the first time, precisely because \u201cit was part of her transformation from a 20th century woman to an 18th century woman.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe Americans<\/span><\/i> may seem less impressive on this count, since it\u2019s set in suburban Virginia, only three decades ago. But it takes some genuine skill to evoke the subtle foreignness of the early Eighties without letting the show become an exercise in nostalgia. Clothing, hairstyles, cars, computers, music, EST seminars\u2026 And the show\u2019s occasional flashbacks to Philip and Elizabeth\u2019s earlier lives in the Soviet Union require the creation of an even more alien past. The show\u2019s regular use of Russian helps disorient us here, just as Gaelic helps makes <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i>\u2018s viewers, like its heroine, feel like Sassenachs (that is, \u201coutlanders\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Americans Panel at The Hollywood Reporter\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BdPbjEXVtCU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>They\u2019re\u00a0interested in the past on its own terms<\/h2>\nHere let me finally bring myself around to the focus of this blog and talk about religion. It takes little effort for American filmmakers to show utter disinterest in the faith and devotion of earlier ages, but its treatment of belief (and unbelief) is one of the strengths of <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\nStarting in season 2, the Jennings\u2019 teenage daughter, Paige, undergoes a Christian awakening through the mentorship of a pastor-activist who could have jumped out of the pages of David\u2019s excellent history of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/moralminoritybook.com\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">politically progressive evangelicalism<\/span><\/a>. Such a plot device isn\u2019t unusual, but it rarely survives one story arc. (Cf. Lyla\u2019s quickly forgotten conversion in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pietistschoolman.com\/2011\/07\/16\/teary-eyes-full-hearts-cant-lose\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">my favorite TV drama<\/span><\/a> of all time, <\/span>Friday Night Lights<\/span><\/i>.) Instead, <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>\u2019 writers have taken <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/interview-the-americans-producers-say-christian-conversion-story-will-continue-to-play-prominently-in-season-3-132985\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Paige\u2019s new commitments seriously<\/span><\/a> and made them more, not less, important to the narrative in succeeding seasons.<\/span><\/p>\nMost notably, Paige\u2019s conversion prompts Elizabeth and Philip to articulate their own lack of belief, which makes <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>\u00a0the rare TV show that\u00a0takes atheism seriously. This theme was first hinted at in the show\u2019s second episode, when the Jennings have to coerce a devout African American woman into planting a bug: \u201cPeople who believe in God always make the worst targets,\u201d complains Philip. But Paige\u2019s defiant embrace of Christianity fans the flames of her parents\u2019 hostility to organized religion. In place of theism, Elizabeth continues to cling to the humanistic idealism of a Soviet generation inspired by the memory of resistance to fascism and the witness of popular revolutions in the Third World. (Elizabeth soon takes a novice spy from Nicaragua under her wing.) Meanwhile, Philip sinks into disillusionment as the Soviet government proves to be at least as corrupt as its adversary. <\/span>(On the notion of the Soviet Union as an \u201cempire of justice,\u201d simultaneously hopeful and cynical, see Odd Arne Westad\u2019s <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Global-Cold-War-Interventions-Making\/dp\/052170314X\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Global Cold War<\/span><\/i><\/a>.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nTellingly, Elizabeth assumes that her daughter\u2019s commitment to social justice Christianity makes her a good candidate for recruitment to the Soviet cause, a major story line in season 3. But that season ended on a different note. The KGB allows Elizabeth to fly to Berlin to see her dying mother one last time, and to take her own daughter along \u2014 all part of the recruitment effort. But as that storyline resolves, we see Paige praying for her grandmother, while Elizabeth can only watch.<\/span><\/p>\nOn this count, <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> is less impressive. Religion is central to several episodes: a neo-druidic ritual on Samhain is what helps send Claire back to the 1740s, where she gets caught up in an exorcism and a witch trial that both feature the same sinister Catholic priest; in season 2, she befriends an apothecary with an apparent interest in the occult and works at a hospital alongside a more sympathetic nun who helps her grieve a terrible loss. But too often, it feels like religion is just another layer of costume; the characters cross themselves against superstition, but anything deeper than that is brushed aside as easily as Frank dismisses a vicar\u2019s housekeeper who lends credence to old tales about time traveling: \u201cI simply do not share your beliefs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Most importantly,\u00a0they prompt historical thinking<\/h2>\nBut where <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> succeeds at least as much as <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i> is in its ability to get its audience to think more historically about the past. Whatever its implausibilities, the device of time travel makes it almost impossible for the show to avoid the so-called \u201cfive C\u2019s of historical thinking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nFor example, context and change over time. As much as she needs to dress the part of an 18th century Scot, Claire quickly learns that she must disguise her worldview. Just as the Jennings need to understand and blend into a capitalist society whose values they (well, Elizabeth) resolutely oppose, Claire struggles to comprehend \u2014 and not contradict \u2014 premodern mores about everything from gender roles to criminal justice. In the process, she and we are regularly shaken out of what <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=f-taE3FLTlMC&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Robert Darnton famously called<\/span><\/a> \u201cthe comfortable assumption that Europeans thought and felt two centuries ago just as we do today\u2014allowing for the wigs and wooden shoes.\u201d Or, in this case, the kilts and corsets.<\/span><\/p>\nOccasionally, she loses her cool. During the show\u2019s wheel-spinning interlude in Paris early in season 2, Claire tires of the Rococo frivolity of her aristocratic acquaintances and finally bursts out:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>Doesn\u2019t it distress any of you, how this city treats its poor and underprivileged? Surely you must see the staggering numbers of them as you travel through the city. Just yesterday I saw a woman and her child dead in the middle of the road. It\u2019s absolutely horrible. Surely we must do something to change the situation.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cJe suis tout \u00e0 fait d\u2019accord,\u201d nods a friend, who then suggests an ancien r\u00e9gime<\/em> solution: \u201cThe gendarmes should remove them to the less desirable parts of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_25526\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25526\" style=\"width: 782px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_Culloden#\/media\/File:The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25526\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2017\/09\/The-Battle-of-Culloden.jpg\" alt='Morier, \"The Battle of Culloden\"' width=\"782\" height=\"411\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-25526\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Morier, \u201cThe Battle of Culloden\u201d (1746) \u2013 Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut to their credit, both shows usually step back from facile moralizing. They savor the complexity of their characters and conflicts, another advantage long-developing TV dramas have over most feature films. <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> doesn\u2019t make the English side in the Jacobite uprising particularly appealing, but it also reveals the internal contradictions of Scottish nationalism. The Americans<\/em> learn to both love and hate their country, whether they\u2019re thinking of their homeland or the place they inhabit.<\/span><\/p>\n(At their best, these series don\u2019t encourage moral judgment, but what Tracy McKenzie has called <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faithandamericanhistory.wordpress.com\/tag\/moral-reflection\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">moral reflection<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>In particular, these two frequently violent dramas use their historical settings to help viewers wrestle with the reality of evil, the corrosive consequences of sin, and the potential for redemption.)<\/span><\/p>\nBut for both <\/span>The Americans <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i>, the single most important historical \u201cC\u201d is contingency. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/publications-and-directories\/perspectives-on-history\/january-2007\/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke define it<\/span><\/a> as \u201ca powerful corrective to teleology, the fallacy that events pursue a straight-arrow course to a pre-determined outcome, since people in the past had no way of anticipating our present world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBut in <\/span>Outlander<\/span><\/i> they do! Claire knows the fate of Bonny Prince Charlie and the clans that took the field at Culloden on April 16, 1746. So she tries to change that outcome, making season 2 an extended meditation on the modern assumption that history is indeterminate, that (Andrews\u2019 and Burke\u2019s words again) \u201cindividuals shape the course of human events.\u201d In the end,\u00a0she learns what historians frequently have to accept: cause and effect aren\u2019t that easy to understand, even with centuries of hindsight.<\/span><\/p>\nIn <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i>, Philip and Elizabeth don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming in 1989-1991, but they can sense the mounting urgency and deepening weakness of the Soviet government. They continue to carry out their mission, one we know to be futile. But if we find the stories suspenseful, aren\u2019t we being invited to reconsider the inevitability of Western victory in the Cold War? And if we find the characters sympathetic, aren\u2019t we forced to reconsider its meaning as well?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why The Americans and Outlander may be the best historical dramas on the small or silver screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2794,"featured_media":25526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2974],"tags":[3069,2839,612,2969,302,284,518,2702],"class_list":["post-25522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chris-gehrz","tag-atheism","tag-cold-war","tag-communism-2","tag-historical-film","tag-historical-thinking","tag-russia","tag-scotland","tag-television"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>The Two Best Historical Dramas on TV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why The Americans and Outlander may be the best historical dramas on the small or silver 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I\u2019m professor of history at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I also help direct the Christianity and Western Culture program. 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