Ken Burns Preps Benjamin Franklin Doc for PBS

Benjamin Franklin, a new two-part documentary directed by Ken Burns, is slated to make its debut on PBS in April 2022.

Written by Dayton Duncan (Country Music, The National Parks) and produced by David Schmidt (The Vietnam War) and Burns, the doc will explore the life of the writer and publisher, scientist and inventor, diplomat and signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. It will air on PBS on April 4 and 5 and stream on the PBS website and the PBS Video app.

Actor Mandy Patinkin provides the voice of Franklin in the two-parter, which also features the voice acting of Carolyn McCormick, Josh Lucas, Paul Giamatti and Liam Neeson. Peter Coyote narrates.

A production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington, D.C., Benjamin Franklin includes interviews with Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson, who also served as a senior adviser to the project, as well as the late Bernard Bailyn (Harvard), H.W. Brands (Texas-Austin), Christopher Leslie Brown (Columbia), Joyce Chaplin (Harvard), Ellen R. Cohn (Yale), Philip Dray (New School), Erica Armstrong Dunbar (Rutgers), Joseph J. Ellis (Mt. Holyoke), Clay Jenkinson, William E. Leuchtenburg (UNC), Stacy Schiff, Sheila L. Skemp (Mississippi) and Gordon S. Wood (Brown).

Burns said: “Benjamin Franklin was a fascinating and complicated individual who helped shape our contemporary world. If we see him for more than his long list of accomplishments, we recognize an imperfect man challenging himself and his contemporaries as he tries to understand and improve the world around him. One of the best and most prolific writers of the 18th century, Franklin both embodies and documents the dynamic social, scientific and political changes of this revolutionary age. His story is one of hope, with a faith in the common man. But his shortcomings are also a reminder of this country’s failure to address slavery at the time of its founding and the racial divisions that continue to impact our country today.”

Schmidt added: “Every American learns about Benjamin Franklin in grade school, but often it ends there. He is too interesting, too complicated and too important a figure not to revisit. We have tried to present Franklin as a real person who lived a real life, separated from the myths that have followed him through time. His biography is uniquely primed to inform us of our history. His 70 years before signing the Declaration of Independence tell us about America before the United States, and in his last 15 years, he was central to bringing the United States into being.”