Amy Dickerson / The New York TimesBen Barnes stars as Samuel Adams in the History Channel’s “Sons of Liberty,” a three-part miniseries that began Sunday and was filmed near Bucharest, with the Romanian countryside standing in for the colonies.

There is no shame in not knowing why Boston boasts a beer called “Samuel Adams,” or why it’s the New England Patriots, not the New England Panthers or the New England Pistols.

But there probably should be some. And that makes “Sons of Liberty,” a History Channel miniseries that began Sunday, useful as well as entertaining.

It opened with the prequel, so to speak, to the American Revolution, a look at the Boston upstarts who led the rebellion against the British crown, and it is framed, not by quill pens and Sunday sermons, but by tavern brawls, rooftop chase scenes, ale, muskets, wenches, smugglers and some very savage mob violence. The opening scene is set on the less quaint streets of Boston in 1765, and it looks a lot like Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.”

The History channel admits there is quite a bit of license to this three-part series, calling it “historical fiction,” not fact, but it is close enough. “Sons of Liberty” is fun and engaging, a better option than a much more ambitious, highfalutin series on AMC last year, “Turn,” which followed a ring of spies working for Gen. George Washington and which was far too elliptical and unwelcoming. “Sons of Liberty” is not as elegantly filmed and high-minded as the HBO series “John Adams,” but here, that’s appropriate.

The focus is on Sam Adams (Ben Barnes), John Adams’ feistier, rowdier and, at least in this account, much-better-looking cousin. “Sons of Liberty” follows Sam, a tax collector for the crown who won’t take money from strapped friends, as he helps start a rebellion with a band of loutish thugs, as well as a silversmith named Paul Revere (Michael Raymond-James); a doctor, Dr. Joseph Warren (Ryan Eggold); and a wealthy merchant, John Hancock (Rafe Spall).

The colonists won the war, but Britain seems to have triumphed in the battle of show business. A startling number of the actors chosen to play America’s founding fathers are British, including Barnes and Spall; Washington is played by an Irish actor, Jason O’Mara. Even Margaret Gage, the American-born wife of a British general, Thomas Gage, is played by an English actress, Emily Berrington.

Barnes is a handsome, brooding and athletic Adams, but Spall steals the show with his mischievous portrayal of Hancock as a vain but sneaky fop and obsequious loyalist who gets his rebel groove on as he loses more and more property to the British overlords. Eggold gets the girl, though: In this telling of the story, Margaret Gage has a torrid affair with the handsome, helpful Warren while secretly helping the rebels.

The English are snobbish and overbearing but not very well-informed. One of the first scenes shows Boston malcontents storming the mansion of the British governor of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson. When an aide warns Hutchinson that trouble is brewing at his gates, he keeps reading. “This is Boston,” he says shortly. “There is always a mob.”

The American Revolution was a turning point, and in some ways, so is “Sons of Liberty,” at least for the History Channel. That cable network has so stretched its storytelling style over the past decade or so that its transition from documentaries to miniseries looks like those charts that show evolution from knuckle dragger to modern man.

“Sons of Liberty” isn’t history, exactly, but it’s a well-made dramatization that brings history to life.