8 AR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020Television
1
MISTER ROGERS’
NEIGHBORHOOD
Empathy and honesty
wrapped in a cardigan.
Death, war, divorce: None of
these seem like auspicious sub-
jects for a children’s television
program. But for more than 30
years, beginning in 1968 on Na-
tional Educational Television
(the precursor to PBS), Fred
Rogers covered all of these topics
and more, with empathy and
honesty. The soft-spoken, cardi-
gan-wearing, former Presbyteri-
an minister was concerned with
not just the academic but the
emotional education of children.
As he told members of the Sen-
ate who were debating whether
to defund public television in
1969, “I feel that if we in public
television can only make it clear
that feelings are mentionable
and manageable, we will have
done a great service.” With the
help of Daniel Tiger, King Friday
XIII, Officer Clemmons and the
rest of the residents of his neigh-
borhood, Mr. Rogers taught
viewers of all ages to not be
afraid of their feelings, to always
look for the helpers and to like
themselves just the way they
are.JENNIFER HARLAN
2
AN AMERICAN FAMILY
When the mundane
became must-see TV.
The French philosopher Jean
Baudrillard called it “dissolution
of TV in life, dissolution of life in
TV”: “An American Family,” the
1973 documentary series reveal-
ing seven months in the home of
Santa Barbara’s Loud family,
presaged the coming of reality
television by many years. In
retrospect, the series is an ap-
pealingly loose portrait of mun-
dane family life, captured before
the tropes of reality TV calcified
and the banal was repackaged as
slickly sensational. But at the
time, it was controversial, dis-
missed by some as voyeuristic,
fake-seeming or unfairly edited.
The series represented a disrup-
tion both for television and the
American family’s self-image: It
chronicled Bill and Pat Loud’s
divorce, and followed their eldest
son, Lance, as he moved to New
York and came out as gay. Lance
became perhaps the first reality
star, emerging from the show as
a gay icon and epitomizing, as he
put it himself, “the middle-class
dream that you can become
famous for being just who you
are.” AMANDA HESS
3
MONTY PYTHON’S
FLYING CIRCUS
Because no one
expects the Spanish
Inquisition.
While now entrenched in the
comedy pantheon, “Monty Py-
thon’s Flying Circus” was rela-
tively unknown in America when
it finished its run in England in
- Few, including its six mem-
bers, thought its humor would
translate. It was too highbrow,
too weird, too British. That this
was proved wrong by PBS,
which is not known for anarchic
humor, is an absurdity worthy of
Python. Classic sketches about
the Ministry of Silly Walks, dead
parrots or the military’s weap-
onization of a joke so funny peo-
ple die laughing became instant
hits among public television
audiences. When ABC aired
edited episodes of the show,
Monty Python sued, becoming
the rare comedians to actually
fight to stay off network televi-
sion.JASON ZINOMAN5
DOWNTON ABBEYThose rich Brits. We
can’t seem to get
enough.
Rich white people problems were
never richer, whiter or more
abundant than in the titular
Yorkshire mansion of “Downton
Abbey,” the sumptuous costume
drama that premiered in 2011 to
become the most watched series
in the history of PBS’s “Master-
piece.” The entanglements of the
aristocratic Crawley family and
their below-stairs staff flicked atearnest social commentary about
the shifting mores of the early
20th century, but the plotlines
were shamelessly popcorn: Mr.
Bates and Anna’s many arrests;
Lady Mary and Matthew’s
doomed romance; Mrs. Pat-
more’s angst over the arrival of
the electric mixer. Even in the
aftermath of a global economic
crisis — or perhaps because of it
— audiences were keen for the
diversion of an extravagant
British period piece, especially
one that offered a Kumbaya
message (chamber music ver-
sion) that people are not so
different no matter their proxim-
ity to the stairs.KATRINA ONSTAD6
UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRSDid we mention we
can’t get enough?
Decades before “Downton Ab-
bey,” other feet climbed the
servants’ stairs of an elegant
manse. In 1974, PBS debuted this
British drama, set above and
below stairs in the London home
of the aristocratic Bellamy fam-
ily. If less visually opulent than
“Downton,” this show had great-
er scope and ambition, shifting
time periods each season, even-
tually covering the years from
1903 to 1930. And the characters
are, if anything, richer. When the
final episode aired in the United
States in 1977, Alistair Cooke, the
host of “Masterpiece Theater,”said there should be a national
day of mourning. In 2011, PBS
and the BBC attempted to revive
it, with a new upper-crust family
moving into 165 Bellamy Place,
but the reboot lasted only two
congenial if not especially in-
spired seasons.ALEXIS SOLOSKI7
THE CIVIL WARHistory plus
Ken Burns equals
monumental.
Ken Burns’s 11-hour documenta-
ry series “The Civil War,” which
aired on five consecutive nights
in 1990, transformed American
history into unexpected must-seeTV. Not only did it smash PBS
audience records, with close to
40 million people tuning in. It
also turned the boyish, bowl-cut-
wearing filmmaker into perhaps
the most influential historian in
America. The signature aesthetic
— mournful music, somber
voice-over, slow pans across
archival photographs — inspired
plenty of parodies, including
“Ken Burns’s Ken Burns” (in
which the filmmaker played a
trash-talking version of himself ).
The series has drawn plenty of
criticism for offering a romanti-
cized narrative of the war as a
tragic misunderstanding be-
tween brothers. But it still stands
as a monument to a cultural
moment when a sizable chunk of
the American population was
willing to sit down in shared
contemplation of our history,
rather than just fighting about
it.JENNIFER SCHUESSLER8
THE THREE TENORSWhen tuxedos and
arias became an
unlikely sensation.
The boyish star tenor José Car-
reras was just 40 and at the
pinnacle of his career in the
mid-1980s when he found out he
had leukemia. But he beat the
odds and survived. To welcome
him back to performance, make
money for his cancer foundationand celebrate the 1990 World Cup
finals, his colleagues Plácido
Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti
sang an outdoor concert with
him at the Baths of Caracalla in
Rome. The three tuxedoed Medi-
terranean gentlemen, belting
arias, pop hits and Neapolitan
songs at the top of their lungs
while dripping with sweat, were
an unlikely sensation, and the
combo spent the ’90s doing over
30 of the shows. The easy-listen-
ing pablum was eaten up on PBS
telecasts and as best-selling
records, and became the defining
operatic (or pseudo-operatic)
phenomenon of the past 30
years.ZACHARY WOOLFE9
FINDING YOUR ROOTSA reveal party with
an edge.
“Finding Your Roots” is a kind of
genealogical mystery show,
wherein the Harvard intellectual
Henry Louis Gates Jr. uncovers
the ancestral lines of famous
Americans. It’s also a platform
for nudging white people to
reckon with the legacy of slavery,
with revealing results. In the
show’s second season, Gates
informed the CNN anchor Ander-
son Cooper that his fourth great-
grandfather was murdered by an
enslaved person who rebelled —
“Your ancestor was beaten to
death with a farm hoe,” was how
he put it — to which Cooper
replied, “He had 12 slaves, I don’t
feel bad for him.” Cooper added:
“It’s shameful, and I feel such a
sense of shame over it; at the
same time, it’s the history of this
country.” Later it was revealed
that another second-season
guest had a different approach
for dealing with his own shame:
Ben Affleck had persuaded Gates
to erase from the program any
mention of a slave-owning ances-
tor.AMANDA HESSWhy We Turned to Them:
In 50 vignettes, our writers reflect on PBS’s lasting imprint on our culture, while Rachael Ray, Gary Clark Jr.,
Damon Lindelof, Kal Penn and others share reminiscences about the television that changed their lives.
4
THE FRENCH CHEFFor Rachael Ray, a reason
to ‘just keep going.’
When I was a kid my mom and I would watch PBS
together, and Julia Child was just the most fascinating
figure to me because she took herself — not seriously!
At all. I just remember how funny and real she was —
hitting the garlic and it would kick across the room and
she’d just keep going, and she’d throw in fistfuls of salt,
and she’d drink. My mom worked in restaurants for 60
years and I always wanted to be just like my mom, so I
was constantly on her hip in the kitchen and trying to
mimic her. Food is what brought us together, so if she
liked something, I liked something. When I first started,
I would think of [Julia] often. If the pasta would hit the
wall, or if something didn’t look just right, I would think
to myself, “Well, Julia would just keep going.” I just love
that about her, that sense of “I’ve put my heart and my
soul into this and it’s going to be whatever it’s going to
be and we’re going to do this together, and you’re going
to see allof it, no matter what.” It wasn’t about being
perfect or the best; it was about living life to its fullest.
She took something that was considered complicated, or
precious, or for a very elite few, and made it digestible
for people and fun. She’s just so groundbreaking. Would
Emeril have had a band and been Emeril and said
“BAM” and thrown a party every night? There’s a
Galloping Gourmet running all over the room and
joking and telling you every little bit of his personal life.
I think that she’s the one that did that for everyone.
Rachael Ray is the host of the syndicated “Rachael Ray
Show” and “30 Minute Meals” on the Food Network.
Interview by Julia Carmel.10
AUSTIN CITY LIMITSWhere Gary Clark Jr. fell in love
(with the guitar).
I was 11, maybe 12 when I started watching it, right around the
time I got my first guitar. I would watch downstairs in our little
living room on a box TV and record it on VCR. I didn’t have a guitar
teacher, so I would sit there on this fuzzy, green carpet with my
black Ibanez RX20 and watch what the guitar players were doing.
Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B. King, Buddy Guy. The
tapes are warped in places because I would watch them over and
over. I had never really seen live music before. A neighbor used to
have parties where a mariachi band would play, and I saw Michael
Jackson when I was 5 years old, but that was really it. Seeing blues
on “A.C.L.,” just down the highway from where we lived outside of
Austin, my eyes opened up. It gave me a greater appreciation of
where I was from, and it showed me something outside of school —
pep rallies and football games, that whole thing. One day, when I
was about 21, I walked past [the executive producer] Terry
Lickona in Austin. He said, “Hey, Gary! When are you going to
play my show?” I was like, “Man, I’ve been waiting for you to ask
me that question for a decade!” The first time I walked onstage [in
2007], I got emotional. There’s no feeling like it. The idea that there
is this TV show where you can get a real, intimate, honest, raw
performance — you just can’t really beat that. It captures a kind of
energy exchange that makes you feel like you’re there. As a kid, I
felt like I was there, and it changed my whole life.
Gary Clark Jr., a Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and guitarist,
first played “Austin City Limits” in 2007. Interview by Reggie Ugwu.Julia Child on “The French Chef.”B. B. King, just one of the guitar heroes on “Austin City Limits.”PARTY OF
ONE STUDIOBBCVIA AUSTIN CITY LIMITSPARTY OF ONE STUDIOLISA BERG/FLORENTINE FILMSMcGEE MEDIAPARTY OF ONE STUDIO50 YEARS OF PBSPAUL CHILD/SCHLESINGER LIBRARY, RADCLIFFE INSTITUTE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.