A Quick Guide to the Mayflower (Instant Expert: American History)

BEWARE: History Channel's, "Quick Guide to the Mayflower" is EXACTLY the same as History Channel's, "Desperate Crossing: the Untold story of the Mayflower". They just took the later movie, gave it a new name and added a quiz at the end. For those of you who may be collecting Mayflower data for historical purposes or teaching, there are exactly the same! It's very deceptive to take one movie and change the cover and name and push it off as a "new product".

They movie itself is excellent, don't get me wrong - just want to point out they are both the same thing under a different title.

amazon.com - should review the products they are selling and they would have realized this and warned consumers! Wish amazon.com would contact me about this.

Unlike the other entries in the "Instant Expert" series, this quick guide to The Mayflower starts out with a lengthy re-enactment and even a title page that gives away its origin as a different film: Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower. Although when compared to its fellow films (Instant Expert: The Story of Oil, Instant Expert: Ben Franklin) it contains a similar documentary outline of narration, expert interviews and re-enactments, the extensive period piece re-enactments (complete with accents and awkward sentence structure) weigh heavily on this piece, distracting from the historical recounting and the factual presentation of information.

Based mostly on the writings of Pilgrim William Bradford, this story begins in England in 1607 and spans the persecution of religious Separatists in England, their trip to The Netherlands, and ultimately, their travels to the New World (which basically seems to begin as a call to a massive mission trip).

When the documentary reaches the discussion of the original settlement in North America and the Pilgrim's interactions with its native people (including Squanto) it improves significantly, but the re-enactments are still too overdone and melodramatic to properly disseminate historical information. Phrases like "This is what thou intendest?!" ultimately kill the non-fictional mood that the History Channel no doubt is hoping to present.

There are Extended Activities and Discussion Questions included in the DVD insert that should help anyone attempting to use this video as a teaching tool.

The pilgrims on the Mayflower colonized America in the early 1600s. They endured religous persecution in their home Europe. Of course they had the first Thanksgiving. First of all, crappy taste; America at that point was a third world country similar to the Phillippines or Ethiopa. The war with the natives is a myth; join us or die? They gave them blankets with smallpox on them. This is an important piece of history. Overall, a decent documentary.