Ken Burns Documentary on ‘Ben Franklin’: A Better American

Second PBS installment, 'An American 1775–1790'

For any trivia question that asks, “who was the first American to do X,” answering Ben Franklin is always a good guess. He was a true renaissance man, who was the most internationally renown colonist (and eventually American) of his day. Of course, he was complex, but he ended up on the right side of history, in pretty much all respects. All of the commentators more-or-less agree with that (some a bit more grudgingly than others) when appraising the Founding Father’s life and legacy in Ken Burns’ two-part documentary “Benjamin Franklin.”

Franklin is indelibly associated with Philadelphia, but he was born in Boston and maintained family ties to the New England city, which was a major hub of revolutionary “Patriot” sentiment (along with the “City of Brotherly Love”). In fact, Franklin was one of the few Founding Fathers who traveled widely through the original 13 colonies, due to his work developing inter-colony mail systems.

New Appreciation

In some ways, Burns presents Franklin as the relentless self-improver with an impish sense of humor that popular opinion generally holds him to be. However, unless viewers have poured through substantial Franklin biographies (like that of Walter Isaakson, who appears as a talking head and is credited as an advisor to the documentary), they are likely to pick up a fresh, new appreciation for the man. For instance, everyone has heard a little bit about his experiment with the kite during a lightning storm, but Burns and his battery of experts make it clear Franklin’s research investigating the properties of electricity was the equivalent of Nobel Prize-worthy work, for his era.