Saints & Strangers

Overall, the TV-movie has the satisfying feel of a traditional historical saga. What makes it more than a well-told story, however, is how Saints & Strangers handles the perspective of the Native American tribes, who must decide whether to wipe out the settlers, or accommodate them.

There are moments of touching transformation among the characters in Saints & Sinners, none more so than that of the bluff Hopkins, who starts with a purely sanguinary view of the Indians he calls savages.

An often engrossing attempt to explore the way needful alliances between Indians and settlers may have had a transforming, even enlightening, effect on some of the English.

Lots to digest here. [23 Nov - 6 Dec 2015, p.15]

Most impressively, Saints & Strangers allows the Native Americans to speak in their own languages, with subtitles. That alone makes the miniseries as realistic as any depiction of the Plymouth Colony seen on screen.

Saints & Strangers is rich in character and detail and captures how arduous this adventure was for the pilgrims.

The film had multiple writers, and keeping the many characters straight requires some effort, but it stays watchable to the end. And it stays relatively true to events, even those that don’t fit into a Scriptwriting 101 template.

National Geographic Channel’s sullen but entertaining two-night miniseries Saints & Strangers earnestly underlines our most American principle, telling a warts-and-all story of that hodgepodge of passengers on the rickety English ship known as the Mayflower.

Though neither ["Saints & Strangers" and "The Pilgrims"] are particularly notable examples of their genre, they are welcome additions, and perhaps antidotes, to a historic holiday increasingly driven by gluttony and football. Used as companion pieces, they should make excellent viewing for families able to persuade their children to watch historic dramas and/or documentaries.

Saints & Strangers’ questionable return to established narratives (in which the pious Pilgrims were just innocent and incidental adventurers) offsets the other important work done to make this a more authentic representation of early colonial life.

The serious intent of Saints trips it up at times; many characters remain one-dimensional, and some sequences are plodding or repetitive. That said, the mini features nuanced work in a number of the Native Americans portrayals--often the best-developed characters on the screen.

While appropriately grimy given the 1620s, rural North America setting (Although it was filmed in South Africa), the dour deprivation depicted proves dull over the miniseries’ first two hours.