David Bianculli

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By focusing on the American Revolution, Ken Burns is revisiting some very familiar territory.

His long and impressive filmography includes a history of the Congress and biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

He's done deep dives into American military conflicts, including World War II and the Vietnam War.

And throughout his career, he's developed and perfected the tricks of his particular trade.

The evocative use of music and quotations from speeches and correspondence.

The use of actors to read the words of historical participants.

the zooming in and out to reveal key details in period photos, and the painstaking attention to sound effects, from birds to bullets, to help bring those images to life.

All of that knowledge and all of those gimmicks are utilized in The American Revolution, the new PBS six-part series about the founding of our country.

It's an exceptional work.

The American Revolution is written by Jeffrey C. Ward, who wrote The Civil War and many other Burns documentaries, including the ones on Congress and Thomas Jefferson.

and it's co-directed by Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, both of whom have worked with Burns for years.

But the American Revolution presents a challenge that even the Civil War did not.

No photographs, period.

To compensate, Burns and company use war reenactors and place them in the actual historical locations.

On many, let's say most, documentaries using a similar technique, the effect can be cheesy.

But in the American Revolution, the directors avoid showing the faces of the actors reenacting battle movements.