David Bianculli

Instead, parts of their bodies are shown in intense close-up.

A bandaged hand here, a muddy boot there.

Elsewhere, in an approach that borders on pure art, the directors use drones to capture the action from high, high above.

It's unusual and beautiful.

Battles are the surprisingly dominant ingredient of this six-part series.

The American Revolution goes into more detail about individual battles than I ever learned in my own American history classes.

But new and vintage maps, clearly animated to show troop positions and movements, make it all very clear and very vibrant.

The actors quoting from the historical participants and the historians interviewed to comment on the action do the rest.

In their various war documentaries, Burns and his team always have focused as much on the ground troops as on the generals, often much more so, telling their story from the bottom up rather than the top down.

The American Revolution does both.

We hear important observations from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, but also from Native Americans, revolutionary women, enslaved people, and others not always given voice in such narratives.

In addition, the program's historians make us think differently about the history we're witnessing.

In the colonies, those who were faithful to the crown were called loyalists and those against them called themselves patriots.

This series humanizes both sides and also explains why some native tribes, including the Shawnees, sided with the British in hopes of protecting their own lands.

The program even looks at old events in a new way, as when historian Maya Jasanoff reacts to the story of a loyalist who was dragged from his home by patriots and tarred and feathered.

Peter Coyote, the actor who has narrated many Ken Burns documentaries, does so again here.

He's got a great voice for it and leans into all the difficult place names and people's names with confident authority.

At one point, I suspect he even has fun reading a particular passage.

It comes in Episode 5, right after the awful winter at Valley Forge.

General George Washington has decided he must train his remaining exhausted troops to a higher level.