Watching this HBO mini-series based on a much-praised biography by David McCullough, think BBC.

(Watch the trailer by clicking here.

We say that because this is stellar historical pageantry. It is always a challenge in historical dramas to cast actors in roles where you can believe that they are the personages whom they are portraying. The John Adams series accomplishes this in a magnificent fashion.

There is a scene in Paris with Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams where suddenly we thought Good Lord, this is really eavesdropping on history.

There's not a miscast character in the series. Even the dreaded King George comes off just as if he were the real deal.

It's hard to begin praising individual performances because they all are.

But we thought that Laura Linney as Abigail Adams was sensational. Linney was able to convey so much with just her eyes and subtle facial expressions that she need not speak. But speak she did, and was every bit the partner of John Adams in intellect -- and far superior in wit.

Paul Giamatti plays a moody, stubborn, convert to the cause of independence who is often outflanked by political rivals, including the idiosyncratic, libertine, Ben Franklin, who doesn't at all mind being adored by the French. (There is a marvelous, nearly surreal scene of a large French aristocratic dinner. Adams, befuddled by the teasing questions from his hosts, looks down with amazement to find that the dinner plates feature a profile of Franklin.)

There is so much that is alluring, subtle and realistic (sometimes brutal) in this production that you come to see the American Revolution with new eyes. You get to hear Jefferson reflect on his doubts about a Constitution because he believes that each generation should determine its laws and conduct, a radical thought to be sure.

Of course, what ties the drama together (often through cross-cutting across the ocean, as Adams spent years abroad representing our fledgling democracy while Abigail took care of their Massachusetts farm and raised their children) is a marriage that lasted 54 years and was composed of two people who had personalities and intellects that compensated for each other in a most compelling fashion.

There's something about "John Adams" that is so unexpected, so delightful. It makes you realize just how revolutionary our revolution was, when revolutionary was not a pejorative term for "radicals." And you realize how plucky were the Americans who revolted against a monarchy and created a nation, in concept, governed by the consent of the governed.

But don't get us wrong. "John Adams" is not didactic.

It's just enthralling historical pageantry that makes this nation's roots come alive in the most irresistable of ways.

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