We begin our search for the right balance between sense and sensuousness with two multi-episode TV biopics made in the present century which cover the period of the British American colonies’ break with the mother country, the creation of the Constitution of the United States, and the first years of the new Republic. The first film is John Adams, a seven-part documentary-drama originally aired in 2008, which chronicles the life of the Massachusetts lawyer and Revolutionary politician who became America’s second president. The second is Washington, a three-part drama-documentary of the new wave which premiered in 2020, whose subject needs no introduction. The biopics dramatize the lives of two of America’s most revered Founding Fathers and provide a linear top-down account of the momentous events that they were at the centre of shaping.