America: The Story of Us

America: The Story of Us (also internationally known as America: The Story of the U.S.) is a 12-part, 9-hour documentary-drama television miniseries that premiered on April 25, 2010, on the History channel. Produced by Nutopia, the program portrays more than 400 years of American history (with emphasis on how the American creation of new technologies has had effects on the nation's history and, by implication, the world). It spans the time from the successful English settlement of Jamestown beginning in 1607, through to the present day. Narrated by Liev Schreiber (Danny Webb for the international version), the series recreates many historical events by using actors dressed in the style of the period and computer-generated special effects. The miniseries received mixed reviews by critics, but it attracted the largest audiences of any special aired by the channel to date.

Why It Isn't The Full Story Of America

 * 1) It continuously focuses on only the bad parts of US history and not the good parts, other than the fact that some of its histories that were good were what made America what it is, which caused some viewers to accuse this show of promoting anti-American nationalism.
 * 2) There are too many celebrities expressing their opinions about the United States rather than having historians provide more insight and data about particular periods and events.
 * 3) Horrible acting on the historic parts.
 * 4) Terrible CGI that is overused continuously, even for 2010 standards, that the History Channel could've spent on fixing this issue, instead of wasting it for its non-history shows at its time.
 * 5) The show's title was so controversial, they changed its name to "America: The Story of the U.S." for international releases.
 * 6) The narrator, Liev Schreiber, is emotionless and extremely boring to listen to him speaking.
 * 7) The writing is filled to the brim with hyperbole, continuously comparing things throughout American history to present items in 2010.
 * 8) There are some scenes that can make people uncomfortable and disgusted, such as the scene in the World War II part where soldiers are shown getting their facial hair shaved up close.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Since the show was intended to 'educated' viewers, it's still somewhat informative, even it's given mixed messages about American history.
 * 2) Since this show was that successful by its ratings, has respawned a follow up Mankind: The Story of US which was slightly better than its predecessor, and get two foreign adaptions based on Australia and Canada by one of their Mainstream new channels respectively, and like the US version, Canada's version has tract its own criticisms in the mini-series.
 * 3) Due to the show's problems as mentioned, it did get a small unironic cult following due to how bad it was.
 * 4) It's a prime example of how NOT to make a documentary inaccurate.
 * 5) The narrator sounding bored can be funny sometimes.

Trivia

 * Many teachers did printing out the Channel's official worksheets for this show, as most of the History Channel shows in the early 2000-the 2010s. Also, these worksheets are still available on the Channel's History Vault page to this day, after the show ended.