Early Reviews Praise New “Grant” Series

The reviews are beginning to come in on the new bio-docudrama “Grant” on the History Channel.

The Wall Street Journal gave the miniseries a favorable review:

The three-night, biographical epic about the Union Army leader and 18th U.S. president—and devoted husband, virtuoso horseman, alcoholic binge drinker and political naif—begins on Memorial Day and follows the standard formula for historical specials: expert testimony, dramatic re-enactments, period photography, maps and montages. But it is all executed at a much higher level than viewers are used to.

The 1862 battle of Shiloh—the “bloodbath” that bookends episode 1 and marks “the point where Grant becomes Grant,” as Harry Laver of the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College puts it—provides a disturbingly realistic introduction to Civil War-fare. Rifle fire comes from nowhere, the bullets find their marks with the kind of soft plunk that spells death; the sound in general is as alarming as the bloodletting. The re-enactments are also a cut above, including the performances—notably Justin Salinger’s portrayal of Grant, which suggests a mid-career Clint Eastwood: Beard bristling, brow knotted, his Grant is never flummoxed by tactical disadvantage or exhilarated by a victory. He never seems to entertain the idea that he could lose at all.

Mr. Salinger makes his character a man of silent passion and steely determination, and he does so within a format that doesn’t lend itself to expansive performance, interrupted as it is by interview testimony. But something just as unlikely and memorable happens with those interviews, which are sprinkled throughout the nearly six-hour miniseries. The experts on hand include historians, academics, military tacticians and, naturally, author Ron Chernow, whose 2017 biography provided his subject a place in the modern consciousness. (Mr. Chernow and Leonardo DiCaprio are among the show’s many executive producers.) What the commentators have to say is illuminating, of course. But director Malcolm Venville and his editors have used the interviews to fit the dramatic momentum of the various episodes in Grant’s life. The enthusiasms and excitement of a given expert speaker link up emotionally with the re-enactments that follow, without the customary hiccups in pacing. The music (by Russell Emanuel and Jacob Shea) picks up the beat further.

The reviewer does feel that the series gives too little time to the Grant presidency, which after all was eight tumultuous years long.

Newsday also liked the series. According to Newsday:

If casual viewers know anything about the Civil War, they know two names — Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Lee’s may be the more venerated, at least in the South, but Grant’s is the more compelling. As “Grant” points out, both were exceedingly aggressive generals, but Grant was the one saddled with the “butcher” reputation. As consolation, “Grant” at least restores the other reputation, as an effective and often inspired battlefield tactician. 

What matters most over these three nights is the stretch dealing with his presidency. As 18th POTUS, Grant followed perhaps the worst president in American history. Andrew Johnson willfully reversed the gains of African Americans, then Grant willfully reversed Johnson: As “Grant” establishes, he neutered the Ku Klux Klan, restored voting rights for blacks, and oversaw their resurgence in political office during his first term. Chernow calls this presidency a “heroic” one, which is the best way to remember Grant — also the best way to wrap the series. 

Except we already know how it will wrap. His presidency became mired in corruption, through no direct fault of his own, and the electorate abandoned Reconstruction. That’s the memory that does endure. 

“Grant” also says that the so-called “Lost Cause” narrative of the Civil War has infected historic perspective in the years since, at Grant’s expense. (“Lost Cause?” That misty-eyed nonsense that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” and not over slavery.) That may seem a bit too simplistic — at least as presented here — but “Grant” does make the more important point: He was a champion of Reconstruction. Heroic indeed. 

As a viewing experience, “Grant” is often engaging. While the docudrama dialogue can be clunky — the common fault of these things — the battle scenes are much better. All those cliches of Civil War narratives — the bodies stacked like cordwood, the bullets like hail — are made vivid here. War is hell, all right.

Salinger’s (“Ripper Street”) Grant is good, too. His eyes capture what Grant must have felt: Unbearable sadness yoked to ironclad resolution.

From the Daily Beast:

“Grant” is an active attempt to rehabilitate the historical record, positing Confederate adversary Robert E. Lee as a symbol of the intolerant, aristocratic, treasonous old guard, and Grant as an emblem of a more open, just, unified modern America. Grant’s disgust for the Confederacy and the rancidness it stood for is on full display throughout this series, which pointedly contends that—good ol’ boy revisionism be damned—it was slavery, not simply the more euphemistic “states’ rights,” which drove the South to secede and take up arms against the Union. At the same time, Grant’s compassion and levelheadedness also remains front and center, epitomized by the lenient terms of surrender he ultimately offered to the defeated Lee, which helped him secure support throughout the South in the years following the end of the war.

Grant’s prolonged focus on the lieutenant general’s most famous wartime decisions means that the series is directly aimed at those with a fondness for in-depth military history. Nonetheless, the context it provides about Grant’s life, both as a young man and as an eight-year resident of the Oval Office, deepens its argument about the titanic nature of his achievements, and the greatness of his character—both of which make him, no matter the vantage point, one of the true, indispensable founders of the American republic.

 

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