Or a background "making of"? In New England it looks like the latter is what we have.

Segments shown.

Can't wait until it starts up here. Thanks for the heads up.

Enjoy!

All the east and west coast PBS stations I get are only showing a “behind the scenes” short program about the Burns series.

I think the actual series won’t start until next week or later.

Edit: just checked- the series doesn’t start until November 16.

https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/the-american-revolution-a-new-film-from-ken-burns-to-premiere-november-16-2025/

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, A NEW FILM FROM KEN BURNS, TO PREMIERE NOVEMBER 16, 2025Facebook
by PBS Publicity• Published on January 9, 2025 • Last modified on March 14, 2025

Press Releases
New Six-Part, 12-Hour Series Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and Written by Geoffrey Ward

PBS to Launch Largest Outreach Effort in Network’s History, with Filmmaker Events in 25-plus Markets, Station Engagement Across the Country, Extensive Educational Materials, and Partnerships with Leading National and Local Organizations

Washington, DC – January 9, 2025 – THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, a new six-part, 12-hour documentary series that explores the country’s founding struggle and its eight-year War for Independence, will premiere on Sunday, November 16 and air for six consecutive nights through Friday, November 21st at 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS. The full series will be available to stream beginning Sunday, November 16 at PBS.org and on the PBS App.

The much-anticipated series, which has been in production for eight years, was directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward. The filmmakers and PBS scheduled the broadcast for 2025, the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, which began in the spring of 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION examines how America’s founding turned the world upside-down. Thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic Coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired centuries of democratic movements around the globe.

An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.

“The American Revolution is one of the most important events in human history.” said Ken Burns. “We went from being subjects to inventing a new concept, citizens, and set in motion democratic revolutions around the globe. As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding, I’m hopeful that people throughout the country will come together to discuss the importance of this history and to appreciate even more what our ancestors did to secure our liberty and freedoms.”

“Our film tells the remarkable history of the people who lived through the American Revolution, their everyday concerns, and their hopes, fears and failings,” said Sarah Botstein (THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST, HEMINGWAY, THE VIETNAM WAR). “It’s a surprising and deeply relevant story, one that is hugely important to understanding who we are as a country and a people. The Revolution changed how we think about government – creating new ideas about liberty, freedom, and democracy.”



“The Revolution was eight years of uncertainty, hope, and terror, a brutal war that engaged millions of people in North America and beyond and left tremendous loss in its wake,” said David Schmidt (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE VIETNAM WAR). “At the same time, the Revolution also changed how Americans thought about themselves, their government, and what they were capable of achieving. The United States that emerged from the war was a nation few could have imagined before the shooting began in April 1775.”

The Revolution began a movement for people around the world to imagine new and better futures for themselves, their nations, and for humanity. It opened the door to advance civil liberties and human rights, and it asked questions that we are still trying to answer today. “I think to believe in America, rooted in the American Revolution, is to believe in possibility,” the historian Jane Kamensky says in the series. “Everybody, on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, had the sense of possibility worth fighting for.”

Kamensky is one of dozens of scholars and writers who appear in the film or advised the production, including Rick Atkinson, Friederike Baer, Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk, Darren Bonaparte, Christopher Leslie Brown, Vincent Brown, Colin G. Calloway, Stephen Conway, Iris de Rode, Philip J. Deloria, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Kathleen DuVal, Joseph J. Ellis, Charles E. Frye, Annette Gordon-Reed, Don N. Hagist, William Hogeland, Maya Jasanoff, Edward G. Lengel, William E. Leuchtenberg, Jennifer Loren, Holly A. Mayer, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jeffrey Rosen, Claudio Saunt, Barnet Schecter, Stacy Schiff, Alan Taylor, Michael John Witgen, Kevin J. Weddle, Gordon S. Wood, Serena Zabin, and the late Bernard Bailyn.

Burns’s long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward (THE VIETNAM WAR, JAZZ, BASEBALL, THE CIVIL WAR) wrote the script and is the primary author of the companion book, The American Revolution, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on November 11, 2025.

Led by the cinematographer Buddy Squires, the series features original footage that highlights the beauty and diversity of the North American landscape. The team shot in every season over the course of several years and at nearly a hundred locations, within and beyond the original 13 colonies, including at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, Colonial Williamsburg, Fort Ticonderoga, Jamestown Settlement, Minute Man National Historical Park, Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Mount Vernon, Valley Forge National Historical Park, the South Carolina backcountry, overseas in London and the English countryside, and elsewhere. The filmmakers also worked with extensive networks of reenactors to film troop movement and camp life.

The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, includes the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures, read by a cast of actors, including Adam Arkin, Jeremiah Bitsui, Corbin Bleu, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, Bill Camp, Tantoo Cardinal, Josh Charles, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Keith David, Hope Davis, Marcus Davis-Orrom, Bruce Davison, Leon Dische Becker, Alden Ehrenreich, Craig Ferguson, Morgan Freeman, Christian Friedel, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Michael Greyeyes, Jonathan Groff, Charlotte Hacke, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Lucas Hedges, Josh Hutcherson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gene Jones, Michael Keaton, Joe Keery, Joel Kinnaman, Tracy Letts, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Josh Lucas, Michael Mando, Carolyn McCormick, Lindsay Mendez, Tobias Menzies, Joe Morton, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Jon Proudstar, Matthew Rhys, LaTanya Richardson, Liev Schreiber, Chaske Spencer, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep, and Yul Vazquez, among others.

The film uses a wide variety of music, both from the period and newly composed pieces for the series, with recordings by Johnny Gandelsman, Rhiannon Giddens, Jennifer Kreisberg, David Cieri, Yo-Yo Ma, and many more. In addition to using hundreds of 18th-century maps, the filmmakers created and commissioned over a hundred new maps. There are also well over a thousand still images in the film, including paintings, letters, lithographs, and other archival materials, from museums, galleries, and libraries throughout the United States and abroad.

PBS and Florentine Films, Burns’s production company, will be working on outreach and engagement with a wide-range of national and local organizations focused on commemorating the country’s founding, including, the National Constitution Center, Colonial Williamsburg, America 250, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Parks Service, The National Archives, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, The Museum of the American Revolution, Monticello, Mount Vernon, the American Association for State and Local History, the Aspen Institute, state and local 250 organizations, and many others.