Pbs Will Deliver Its Best Again With Stimulating TV

Play it again, PBS.

While a preview of many of this fall’s public-television programs suggests they are well conceived, professionally executed, appropriately dramatic and intellectually stimulating, there’s something missing.

Innovation. New faces accompanied by new ideas.

It seems as if PBS, whether because of increased financial pressure or a more conservative philosophy or a combination of both, is going back to the future.

That said, the network is doing what it does very well.

Ken Burns is back looking back, this time with Lewis and Clark. Stephen Hawking looks outward with “Stephen Hawking’s Universe,” Sister Wendy looks inward with “The Story of Painting,” and Michael Palin goes full circle in “Full Circle with Michael Palin.” “Truman,” a three-part documentary on the man from Missouri, leads off the “American Experience” series, and Mobil Masterpiece Theater hits the trifecta with “The Tenant of Windfall Hall,” “The Mill on the Floss,” and “The Moonstone.”

Another way to look at it is that PBS is doing what it does best: history, art, science and literary adaptations.

The two historical epics are the 3-1/2-hour documentary, “Truman” (Oct. 5-6) on “The American Experience,” and Ken Burns’s “Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery” (Nov. 4-5).

In “Truman,” Jason Robards narrates the story of an obscure, bankrupt haberdasher from Missouri whose political life led to the White House from 1945 to 1953. Unlike many politicians, Truman was modest and hardworking and had the honest audacity to question whether he was up to the formidable task of being president.

Ken Burns, TV’s finest nonfiction storyteller (even if “Baseball” was a bit too reverential for a game played with a round ball and a wooden stick), returns with the story of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the explorers sent by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the Missouri River and find a passageway to the Pacific Ocean. The traditional Burns dependence on diaries and newspapers, along with the oral traditions of Native Americans and commentary from scholars and artists, will enlighten some viewers who knew Lewis and Clark only as the comedy duo in Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys.”

The War of Independence gets the full treatment in “Liberty! The American Revolution,” a six-part miniseries debuting Nov. 23. The battles between the Americans and the British, from Bunker Hill to Saratoga to the Carolinas, may be rivaled by the competition between the voice-over actors from both countries. Philip Bosco, Victor Garber, Stephen Lang, Roger Rees and Paxton Whitehead are among the performers, and Edward Herrmann narrates.

In the biographical mold, “The Adventurers,” premiering Oct. 20, highlights the explorations of Neil Armstrong, Richard Byrd, Thor Heyerdahl, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, and August and Jacques Piccard through re-enactments, historical footage and eyewitness accounts.

If Stephen Hawking had taught physics and Sister Wendy had taught art, just think how much better most of us would have done in school.

In Erroll Morris’ 1992 “A Brief History of Time,” the remarkably artful evocation of the life and theories of Hawking, the marriage between filmmaker and subject is sublime. Since Morris had nothing to do with “Stephen Hawking’s Universe,” a six-part series beginning Oct. 13, we can only hope that the producers can capture the same tone that Morris managed.

What’s not to love about Sister Wendy, the nun with the chipmunk smile and a wonderful way of explaining art? Whether her impressions are right or wrong is of little consequence because she’s so marvelously unpretentious, treating the paintings more as friends than as objects. The series, which began last week, continues for another four consecutive Sundays. In it she conducts a whirlwind, captivating tour of Western art.

Palin, whose previous tours included “Pole to Pole” and “Around in the World in 80 Days,” journeys to the Pacific Rim and back in “Full Circle with Michael Palin,” debuting on Sept. 15 and running weekly episodes until Nov. 24. The former member of Monty Python (and the PBS and BBC’s resident tour guide) opens the series in Alaska and Russia before stopping in Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Borneo, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and, finally, back to the United States.

“The Mill on the Floss” airs Oct. 12 with Emily Watson, Cheryl Campbell, James Frain and Bernard Hill cast in George Eliot’s masterful story of cultural provincialism in 1860 England. “The Tenant of Windfall Hall,” airing in two parts beginning on Oct. 19, is based on the novel written by Anne Bronte, sister of Charlotte and Emily, and published in 1848. Tara Fitzgerald stars as the enigmatic “tenant” who’s at the apex of a love triangle played out against the backdrop of rural Victorian England.

Credited with starting the detective genre, Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone” screens on Nov. 2 with Antony Sher as the legendary Sgt. Cuff in a two-hour adaptation.

“Mystery!” is one of PBS’ most popular series, and it returns with familiar faces in unfamiliar roles on Thursday nights at 8.