Ken Burns makes pretty good, informational/educational films but my god his subjects are more sterile than anything else.

What do you mean by subjects? The subject matter? I beg to differ.

He swabs everyone he interviews with alcohol. It's really irritating.

Looking forward to this. Cleared my entire DVR to make room.

The subject matter. But I guess you're right, topics like the Civil War, Jazz, and WWII haven't been covered nearly enough.

The man is hardly of any note, other than the effective use of music. Without the fantastic scores, he would be fucking nobody....also, way too much publicity, which is saying a lot for a documentarian.

His documentary about the history of baseball was fucking awesome. I haven't seen the rest, but someday I'd sure like to.

Have you heard his reasoning? And not everyone has covered these topics in depth, not everyone goes to college or is exposed to jazz. I'm really glad he's decided to do these documentaries, personally.

I don't think the world needs another WW2 documentary. Maybe he should do one on WW1, it always gets overshadowed by the second, but it had an equally great impact on the world (you could argue that it had a greater impact)

True.

Any WWII documentary worth its salt is going to include lots of info about WWI and lots of stuff about the early stages of the Cold War as well, though.

You can either watch this or turn on the history channel

I kinda wish the history channel was still the hitler channel. How I miss those days.

I love the History channel

Baseball so consumes his life, he never had time for a proper haircut.

The first episode was very good. The whole idea for this is to show the real war, as opposed to the idealized version we've gotten used to. Most of the vets are facing death from old age soon, so many of them are willing to relate memories they've hitherto kept buried, or only shared with family members. There was a soldier talking about how he assumed the newsreels on the rape of Poland were just typical atrocity propanganda to drum up hatred for the Germans, and a woman (with an irritating accent) who wondered why we didn't just go in and rescue the marines at Guadalcanal. You really get a sense of how little people really understood what they were up against until they were actually face to face with the results.

And I don't see the problem with Ken Burns. Except his Jazz doc. That should've been called "The Marsalis Brothers' Guide to Jazz."

Bingo. WW2 has been so romanticized, and I appreciate a less idealized, honest approach told from the everyday person's standpoint.

Look, lets cut the shit. The only WW2 documentary series you'll ever need to watch is 'The World at War'. Anything else is just pointless filler.