Texas Rising

History Channel’s ‘Texas Rising’ goes beyond Alamo siege:

The landscape in “Texas Rising” mostly looks and feels like Texas, but without all the skyscrapers and air conditioning. It’s hot, dusty and scrubby. At one point, though, Sam Houston, elegantly played by Bill Paxton with some killer sideburns, sets up camp on a mountain with a stunning view — even though there would not have been breathtaking vistas where Houston and the Texas Rangers were plotting to defeat the Mexican army.

“Those early episodes were all shot in Durango, Mexico,” said David Marion Wilkinson, a writer and co-producer on the project. “The settings don’t match. San Jacinto was all piney woods and bayous. Gonzales is flat land and farm land. ... But this is entertainment. I don’t think the geography is going to bother too many people.”

It bothered me.