Saints & Strangers

Saints and Strangers depicts the Pilgrim's journey to the new world and their first encounters with the Native Americans. The story portrays a balanced view between both groups' points of view. While this mini-series was extremely well done, I felt it suffered from having too many characters and not having a clear central character. It also would have been nice to have had a little more exposition at the beginning. I am not super familiar with that this particular time period. So having a little more information would've been a good thing. Also, I think it would have been better to have more than two episodes as the story wouldn't have felt so rushed. With that said, I thought the acting was great. Anna Camp's performance was amazing and heartbreaking. It's different than the roles she normally has, and I wish she had a bigger part. However, I understand why it was the way it was. This show also a reminder of a time when the world was a harder place to live in, and it's crazy to think about what those earlier settlers went through. And I would recommend watching this one if you get a chance.

Saints and Strangers does a pretty good job of telling the story of the early encounters between New England's pilgrim settlers and their Native American hosts/antagonists. I felt the story portrayed a balanced (accuracy is debatable) view of the plight of both groups. The constant cultural dilemmas, physical dangers, and shifting alliances made for a good night of television. There's obviously a lot of history to fit into 2 episodes so hopefully this will return as a full series. One interesting note: when I read through the cast of characters, I was surprised to see Ron Livingston (of Office Space fame) listed as portraying John Carver? I totally missed him...I'll have to pay closer attention when I watch it again.

The actual premise of the story, showing the Mayflower settlers from a different perspective, was very good, acting was great and nice to see proper weapons being used correctly. However one thing that really took away from the whole thing was the women actors looked as if they had just visited a beauty parlour, with their carefully coiffured hair and immaculately plucked eyebrows going very well with their flawless skin. Living in conditions like that you very quickly get 'the grime' , a dirtiness that covers you and takes many hot baths and showers to get rid of. Your hair grows in tangled messes and your skin erupts in a whole selection of interesting and persistent blemishes. And as for one of the women wearing a crocheted shawl, really? She would be wearing animal skins or if really lucky an old blanket.

This is a good show, particularly interesting for non-American viewers, who don't really know much about the Mayflower colony. I think it would have been better if it was a little bit longer or if it chose its pov more decisively. This could be primarily William Bradford's story, or Squanto's story, or Stephen Hopkins 's story or -why not indeed- Mrs Hopkins' story, its running time was too short to be everyone's (and noone's) story.

A very well played movie, with an interesting plot. I didn't get bored a single second of it and I recommend it to anyone.