I rather agree with you on the John Adams series being a bit heavy on the poignant and angst ridden. Playtone originally wanted to do 11 one-hour segments, but HBO told them no more than 7 hours. The series ended up around 8 and a half hours, but with the cut in the air time, the script changed. The scenes whittled down to mostly those involving John Adams and his political life and lost numerous scenes that would have filled out the emotional story. (I keep hearing "sit down, John, sit down" as my 1776 theme music tag line for this show. :)) Still rather fun to watch, mostly because I am a sucker for period films and there are so few decent movies about the American Revolution.

I also agree with you about Mr. Hancock and Mr. Rutledge in their silk coats and wigs. Looked right fine. And you're right, Nabby's shoulder length hair was off, but not because it was too short. Most women and girls had hair maybe a couple of inches longer than shoulder length. (A lot of the big hairstyles were achieved with hair pieces.) The reason Nabby's hair looked "off" is because she should have had it up and under a cap most of the time, unless she was in bed or in the privacy of her bedchamber. The hair dresser and costume designer talked about putting extentions in Madeline's hair, but were finally talked out of it by one of the history consultants, who used period images the costume designer had collected to make her point.