Over its five parts, The American Experiment covers the lead-up to the American Revolution, the revolution itself, the period under the Articles of Confederation, and finally the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. It has the standard features of historical documentaries in the present age: talking heads, old photos, old locations, and little mini-reenactments with too few actors (e.g., the reenacted continental army has only about 50 soldiers).
The talking heads include a number of authors of relevant books, some more academic and some more popular. I seek out Tom Nichol's writing in the Atlantic and enjoyed seeing him on screen. I liked most of the others too, and would be curious to know how much control they had over the substantive content of their bits.
The talking heads also include a veritable jamboree of politicians, including Al Gore, Hilary Clinton, Ron Wyden, Ted Cruz, Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, and Rand Paul. I think their presence represents an effort to make the show visually bipartisan in a sort of pre-MAGA, pre-DSA way (those were the days ...). Tom Hanks is one of the executive producers and I tend to associate him with bipartisan, civic-minded impulses of this sort. While I have some amount of patience for Jeff Flake and Rand Paul, I would have skipped the politicians entirely in favor of more historians. I think including politicians will serve mainly to make the documentary age faster than it otherwise would.
The academic in me was bothered by the absence of references to John Locke or any of the other philosophers whose ideas filled the heads of the Founders and guided them as they declared and constituted. A naive viewer could easily come away from the documentary thinking that the founders thought up classical liberalism on their own. They did not.
Finally, the show on a few occasions refers directly to current events in order to bash a certain sitting president. These bits will speed up the show's aging even more than Al Gore. And they are unnecessary! Even relatively dim viewers will get the point by just having the talking heads, or the narrator, repeat relevant lines from the Declaration of Independence or Common Sense or the Federalist Papers. The show does not need to beat the viewer over the head, and do some damage to its bipartisan mojo, by connecting the already painfully obvious dots.
To close, let me balance out my criticisms by noting that others in my household found the series entertaining and informative. And I did not mind most of it either.
