Texas Rising

120 minutes per episode?

At the History Channel, I always have the feeling that in the search for a new series format, they just pull out a random history book, open it haphazardly and make the story they read the starting point for their next love baby. For example, they brought us screaming Vikings for a number of seasons, we were allowed to watch through the holes in the hedge with the neighbor quarrel of the Hatfields & McCoys and earlier this year they shined their light on the occupation of the English. The next chapter of the history lesson is called Texas Rising and is about the Texas Revolution. Jihaaaa! It is 1835 and the European Americans take real life Risks on the go. At first the Indians were often brutally diced by the blue and white red armies of the board, now it is the turn of the Mexicans. Indeed, that more more bigger bigger syndrome came in pretty early with those pick-up-truck-tearing-everything-with-a-thick-layer-Heinz-covering boys. The rednecks are guests in the then Mexican province of Texas, but after dissatisfaction with the political course of events decide to take matters into their own hands. The small tuft of Mexican soldiers lying here and there on a veranda with the service pistol on their stomach, doing a siesta here and there, is chased over the blade or border and hoppa, again some square kilometers. Of course, Mexico will not let this go its way and in February '36 President Antonio Santa Anna thunders into Texas with roaring guns to put things in order. It will be a short bloody war and the fact that little xenophobic George Bush Jr. has now a house betrayed who ultimately won the prize. If you enjoy watching cowboys and Indians, then you can watch Texas Rising. If you enjoy playing cowboys and Indians, but also need some depth every now and then, then I would rather leave Texas Rising for what it is. The characters are so gapingly uninteresting that it will really be hard for you to see whether they become the hero of the day or eventually end up on the tip of a Mexican bayonet. The History Channel has allocated eighty minutes for each episode, let's say film, but digging into the different characters a little bit. Because of this you never really get into the story and you actually sit for ten hours watching random dudes who, for some unclear reason, bombard each other with arrows and bullets. It wasn't until writing these three paragraphs that I found out that the Americans were actually on the wrong side of history. You wouldn't understand that at all from Texas Rising. There, the Americans seem more likely to be portrayed as the heroic fighters who have defended the New World tooth and nail against those dangerous Diazzen and Dos Santossen. That is not the case at all and I find that retroactively so very disturbing. Add to that the fact that at times you think that you are watching the 90's Zorro and with Texas Rising you have a series that is quite nicely made, but with content rattles on all sides. A kind of Sylvie Meis among the series, so to speak.