Posted on 11/18/2025 8:37:17 AM PST by bitt
Historical television has been a hit or miss proposition since the 1950s, when CBS aired the series, You Are There. Narrated by Walter Cronkite, the series first aired on radio beginning in 1947 and moved to TV in 1953.
It was a fascinating concept. CBS correspondents would report on earth-shaking events from the past as if they were doing a live broadcast, interviewing historical figures, and providing analysis as if the events were happening in real time. I tried something similar early in my writing career, reporting on the Battle of Gettysburg and the signing of the Declaration of Independence as if I were blogging about the events live.
Too bad George Lucas wasn't around to sex up the CBS production.
Television hasn't precisely neglected the American Revolution, but with no photographs or film, it's hard to make the events of the war and all that was happening at the time entertaining or even very interesting.
There have been exceptions. The 1995 TLC mini-series The Revolutionary War, narrated by Charles Kuralt, was exceptional, even if it gave a limited view of what was happening elsewhere. The Revolution (also known as The American Revolution), a 13-episode miniseries that aired on The History Channel in 2006 and was narrated by Edward Hermann, was very good, very polished, but lacked any zest. It was a paint-by-numbers effort of telling a story that resists a linear construct; too much is happening in too many places for us to gain an understanding of the whys and wherefores of the revolution.
PBS and Apple TV also created programs that dealt with the revolution. Now, Ken Burns, easily America's finest documentarian of history and culture, has taken a shot at telling the story of us. After his monumental achievement in telling the story of The Civil War
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
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Ken Burns is a hardcore Dem.
The fella puts on a helluva show.
Too bad he’s a woke commie.
Still, he’s talented.
Maybe there is a side to Burns I have never seen.
Cute.
Not bad compared to his “Baseball” series. Maybe it’s due to his new hairstyle. But seriously, The American Revolution series is a Grand Slam, where “Baseball” was only a HBP (Hit By Pitch).
“”The voices are supplied by a stable of great actors, starting with Peter Coyote’s heartfelt narration, and moving on to Paul Giamatti’s John Adams (reprising his role as Adams in the HBO mini-series), Josh Brolin reading Washington’s words, “giving General Washington a deep-voiced respectability,” according to USA Today. Jeff Daniels is Thomas Jefferson. Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, and Matthew Rhys add gravitas to the production.””
Thanks for posting. The writer is correct - Ken Burns is a national treasure and there are none better than Peter Coyote as narrator. I’m not particularly thrilled with some of the choices for “voices” for this production but it should be excellent nevertheless..
Every narrorater is a hardcore communist. No thanks.
It’s not a masterpiece.
It’s much less preachy than I had feared. It’s mostly filled with faces of historians talking about . . . the current thinking in history academe about what was going on.
It has some dwelling on slavery and women, but in truth, that was less than a full minute of film time.
New things learned? The indebtedness of the British Empire and desperation for revenue from the colonies. This equated to a presumption in the British govt’s mind that they were not something less than full English subjects.
General Gage, the British commander as the war approached, was married to an American. He is often labeled as tentative and timid in his actions, but presto, an explanation.
Things annoying . . . zero talk of smallpox, probably the single most definitive factor of everything going on. History HATES disease. Disease as causation erases dissertation topics for future PhD candidates. The Brits were far ahead of the US in the norm of inoculation. Their troops had this huge advantage and the Brit commanders knew it and often tried to send blankets to the colonial troops.
Clear manifestation of biological warfare.
And the Founding Fathers . . . Philly was infested. The FF were not stupid but they were not the absolute cream of each colony’s intellect. A history of inoculation or having survived smallpox and yellow fever (Philly was surrounded by swamps then) in their lives was as compelling a selection factor for each colony’s representative as any intellectual history or ability to speak well. Disease decided who the FF were, more than other factors.
Yes. Burns is a 1619 left winger. I’ll bet you a beer that the central theme will be that the revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
I suspect you need a PBS membership to stream it.
I listened to an interview with him on CNBC yesterday. He made it very clear that George Washington was the hero of the Revolution. Then without him, we would not have a country. Maybe you should watch before making a judgment
Check out “Sons of Liberty” on Amazon Prime.
It’s on Sunday nights. Without membership. Just join your local station via email (not buying Passport) and you’ll see it. Or watch it on TV Sunday night.
PBS is not overall controlling. Each local station has a lot of autonomy. You have to hit the PBS website, which will ask you your locale and connect you to your station’s page. Then you figure out how many episodes forward or backwards you can see.
I have found that logging in (not paying) will get you access to that week’s episode all week long — though there have been some occasions when I found for a given show that I could go back to previous week episodes.
It was on channel 8, the PBS station here in Phoenix, on cable. I don’t have a membership to PBS it was free. My brother does not have cable and watched it on the PBS channel.
It’s not. Slavery is mentioned, but as I mentioned above, it occupied maybe a minute or 90 seconds of film time.
The most film time consumed in minutes was the practically mile by mile march coverage of the British to Lexington, then Concord and then taking casualties during their retreat.
Slavery and women (mostly Abigail Adams) got time, but it’s the presentation, which I do not think deserves worship as to quality, was not buried in those subjects.
I prefer the 1776 2.0 going on from the Oval Office today.
Maybe Ken Burns will be around to create that doc that highlights the eventual govt of the Swamp, by the Swamp, for the Swamp completely obliterated from the earth.
The production values on “TURN, Washington’s Spies” was very good and the story compelling.
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