Anyone who grew up in the United States is more than familiar with the Revolutionary War. You remember all those grade-school lessons on how the brave Founding Fathers got fed up with the tyranny of King George and his "taxation without representation," how the British stirred things up with the Boston Massacre, and finally how the fledgling U.S. army, led by George Washington, defeated the Redcoats and ushered in a new age of freedom.

Well, it wasn't quite like that. Apart from the inevitable over-simplification of what gets taught in elementary schools, there's the fact that the winners are the ones who write the history books... using that opportunity to highlight certain aspects of the conflict and downplay others. As anyone who's studied the U.S. war for independence more than superficially is aware, the war was not about "freedom" in the way that we idyllically imagine that it was. It was a lot messier, a lot more complicated, a lot less idealistic than we imagine it. It's also a lot more interesting than the "folklore" version suggests. What got this war started, and exactly how did a bunch of rag-tag rebels, with no professional army, manage to defeat mighty Britain, the superpower of the day?

That's the question at the heart of Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America. This outstanding documentary, subtitled "The American Revolution: A British View," takes a new look at this war that has become a national icon of freedom. What was it really about? What prompted the rebellion, and how did it proceed? What did "freedom" mean to the rebels who were, presumably, fighting for it? And how did the rebels manage to win? The documentary is extremely up-front about its perspective and point of view: as the title and subtitle tell us, this is very much a British view. As such, it's highly refreshing, offering a breath of fresh air and a fresh perspective on the topic.

To begin with, Rebels and Redcoats very clearly presents the Revolutionary War as what it really was: a civil war. This wasn't a case of everyone in the British colonies deciding one day that they'd rather not be part of the British empire; there were very good arguments for staying loyal, and many – perhaps most – ordinary people were not inclined to rebel. The division between rebel and loyalist within the colonies is one of the many fascinating historical threads that is traced in Rebels and Redcoats; we discover, for instance, that the American rebels used brutal terror tactics to discourage loyalists from joining the British forces.

Starting with the unrest in Boston and following through all the way to the end of the war, Rebels and Redcoats traces not just what happened, but what those events meant for the people involved. The documentary takes pains to include the stories of many who are often overlooked or ignored in conventional histories of the war, such as the large slave population in the south, who were explicitly excluded from the promise of "freedom"; slave-owners like George Washington disdained using black troops and were furious at the British tactic of freeing slaves in exchange for loyalty. We also see the impact of the Revolutionary War on the Native American tribes who lived to the west of the British colonies. One of the "freedoms" that the colonists were fighting for was the "freedom" to disregard the boundaries that the British had negotiated with the native tribes, and expand westward unchecked, taking land by force.

Rebels and Redcoats is narrated by military historian Richard Holmes, who does an outstanding job of making the strategy and tactics of the war extremely accessible to the viewer. We learn about key battles in detail, but it's not just a collection of facts. Holmes explains how and why events happened as they did, showing how the action was shaped by personalities and experience of the people involved, the circumstances of the battle, and by the decisions made both before and during the battle. Until now, I've never been particularly drawn to military history, but Holmes shows how interesting it can be. What's more, he integrates it with social and cultural information to create a fully three-dimensional picture of the events, their causes, and their consequences.

The program's 200-minute running time is broken into four 50-minute parts: "The Shot Heard Round the World," "American Crisis: 1776," "The War Moves South," and "The World Turned Upside Down." Each is well paced, providing a steady flow of information through Holmes' narration, as well as judiciously used re-enactments, interviews with other historians and experts, and quotations from documents and letters of the time. My only qualm with the program is that occasionally Holmes gets too detailed; we don't really need to know the names of each of the soldiers who fell at a specific encounter, for instance. But this is a minor quibble, and I can see that it's a side effect of the program's attention to documenting all of its facts and conclusions.

The DVD

Video

Hooray for British widescreen TV! Rebels and Redcoats isn't anamorphically enhanced, but it is presented in a nice widescreen 1.85:1 transfer, which is the documentary's original aspect ratio. The image is clean and pleasing to the eye, with natural-looking colors and satisfactory contrast. It's a bit soft overall, but not excessively so, and there's little edge enhancement.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack does a satisfactory job here; while the sound tends to be a bit flat, overall the track offers a clean and clear listening experience. Narrator Richard Holmes sometimes provides a voice-over and other times appears on-camera, and in all cases his voice is distinct and easy to understand.

Extras

There are no special features on this DVD.

Final thoughts

Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America is a must-see documentary, illuminating not just the real events and motivations behind the American Revolution, a war that's all too often reduced to a folkloric level, but also revealing a great deal about the nascent character of the United States. Rebels and Redcoats offers an intelligent, thoughtful, well-researched program that promises to be both insightful and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.