A new 10-hour miniseries directed by Roland Joffe (“The Killing Fields”) from teleplays by “Walker: Texas Ranger” creator Leslie Greif, Darrell Fetty (“Viper,” “Mutant X”) and George Nihil, “Texas Rising” looks at what happened after Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna killed Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie at the Alamo. Bill Paxton plays Sam Houston, and is supported by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Ray Liotta, Brendan Fraser, Kris Kristofferson and Jeremy Davies as deserter Ephraim Knowles.
... The series looks and sounds like a western from the 1940s, and that’s not a compliment. The good guys — the Texians — are good, and the bad guys are reductive figures who exist to be hated. The whole enterprise is encumbered by truly awful dialogue. No character, historically real or imagined, is immune from spouting a trite phrase.…
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... At least in the first two episodes sent to critics, the miniseries misses a potentially rich opportunity to tell more nuanced and, hence, more compelling stories of the players in this great, early drama of Texan and American history. …
... a wonderfully cast and otherwise completely wooden miniseries … juggles too many indifferently written, tough-talkin’ characters, as if “Lonesome Dove” had experienced a sharp blow to the head. Fans of Westerns will no doubt be eager to immerse themselves in this once-abundant, now-underutilized genre, but for those who tend to be discriminating about their TV watching, don’t mess with “Texas.” …
9 p.m. Monday History.
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