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Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps it would also be worth mentioning Ken Burns and his documentaries.

They're absolutely worth watching and gives BBC a run for its money.

Perhaps start with The West and then move on to Civil War. My personal favorite was perhaps the one on Jazz, made in 2001.

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His Vietnam series was great.

Civil War... I guess I already knew a lot about it, so what I noticed mostly was more sympathy than I'd like for a sort of Lost Cause nostalgia, and not much talk of slavery. But I guess he had to sell it for its time...

Loved the Vietnam series too. Have watched it a couple of times on Netflix.

I'm 40 yo European so I knew close to nothing about the Vietnam war other than what I had seen in some movies. Very in depth and emotionally powerful. It also seemed pretty objective to me as a complete outsider.

That's because he had hacks like Shelby Foote trying to convince people that the Civil War wasn't caused by slavery.

The Central Park 5 is utterly heartbreaking. I think it's Ken Burns' closest to today. I believe all its main people are alive today.

One is in the White House. What he did in this case was unconscionable.

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five

His brother Ric Burns made a documentary about the Donner Party. It really is a masterpiece of non-fiction horror.

Unfortunately it's unavailable for streaming. Every time someone uploads it, it gets taken down.

This Peabody Award clip is all that's available. The DVD can be had for cheap on Amazon.

https://youtu.be/w-eTjCuNDoE

https://film.avclub.com/the-most-terrifying-pbs-special-of-a...

Baseball and National Parks are two of my personal favourites.

His Vietnam is particularly powerful since it's filled with personal accounts.

A new one starts tonight on Country music. Even though I'm not a big fan of the genre, I expect it to be fascinating.

The Roosevelts was my intro to Ken Burns and it was the only TV show ever that I could not stop watching. Since then, I've also been very impressed by the quality of all the other Ken Burns documentaries.

I'm not sure that they give the BBC a run for its money - you're talking about quite a lot of Beeb output ;-) I agree that they are of an unusually high standard.

BBC documentaries, many of them atleast are having a reputation beyond what they deserve I think, often times the real information in them is sparse, and they present overtly simplistic narratives, with too much padding.

In comparison to what, though? It's easy to knock the Beeb, but compare the output (TV, Radio, and Web) to anything vaguely similar and you will probably appreciate the quality. They're not just making docus, it's so much more. Funnily enough, the Beeb aired the Burns Vietnam, too.

For example compared with the work of Asif Kapadia in recent years, which almost entirely avoids voice over narratives.

I watch episodes 5-8 of Jazz like once a year

Those are great documentaries....

I also really enjoyed Empire of the Air, covering the history of radio.

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