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For Sale Apr 15, 2026 at 2:33 PM

I've seen 0 reviews on "Henry David Thoreau" documentary on PBS, produced by Ken Burns, featuring George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum, and Maryl Streep. How is it?

Posted by Behacad

I've seen 0 reviews on "Henry David Thoreau" documentary on PBS, produced by Ken Burns, featuring George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum, and Maryl Streep. How good is it? It is obviously not a very long documentary, but is it solid?
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Waste_Tradition6670 Apr 15, 2026 +10
watched already good
10
Juunlar Apr 16, 2026 +1
Og like documentary 
1
Invisible_Mikey Apr 15, 2026 +15
All of the Ken Burns collection are watchable, so long as one type of source is available - PHOTOGRAPHY. The Thoreau doc has photography from the period, so it works. I'm not sure it was a good idea to have Streep voice multiple characters, because they all sound like her, but Goldblum is especially good, and he's Thoreau. Clooney narrates. It took me a few days to figure out why The American Revolution was so boring compared to all the others I had seen (The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, The West etc.) It's too early for photos. Hours of documents, paintings and battle maps talked about by a good cast of historians, but the actors could not fully come across and connect without the photographic support of faces or locations in that time and place.
15
PBSNerd1234 Apr 17, 2026 +5
Funny enough, I got to hear Ken and Sarah talk about *The American Revolution*, and they leaned into that limitation pretty hard. He was absolutely geeking out about the maps. Like, really excited about how many they were able to create and how much storytelling they could do with them. It was very “we don’t have photographs, so we’re going to build the world a different way.” They seemed especially convinced that they couldn't have made AmRev 20 years ago, both because of better sources and better 3D map rendering. I think whether it lands probably depends on how much you connect with that style. If you’re used to the photography doing the emotional heavy lifting in his other docs, it’s definitely a shift. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.
5
AlstottsNeckGuard Apr 15, 2026 +6
LA Times and WSJ both have reviews on it. It's informative and interesting if you are into the subject matter, like any documentary
6
ArbysLunch Apr 15, 2026 +2
I've been watching the snippets dropped on youtube and what I've seen is quite good.
2
PBSNerd1234 Apr 17, 2026 +1
If you like Ken Burns, you’ll like it. Same style, but a lot of real research behind it. These usually have historians heavily involved, so even when it feels simple, it’s pretty well put together.
1
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