The Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust premieres September 18 on PBS. The film examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany, the eugenics movement in the United States and race laws in the American South, and what the American people did, and did not do, as the Holocaust took root.

Burns told B+C there’s always a certain “exuberance” when one of his projects is finished, but The U.S. and the Holocaust is different. “I won’t work on a more important film,” he said. “I hope other films I’ve done are as important. I hope what I’m working on now will be as important. But I know I will not work on a more important film.”

Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition, there are three two-hour parts to the documentary. Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein are the directors and producers. 

Work on it began in 2015. “It was seven years ago that we got down on one knee and proposed to it,” said Burns. 

In press materials, Novick said: “Exploring this history and putting the pieces together of what we knew and what we did has been a revelation. During the Second World War, millions of Americans fought and sacrificed to defeat fascism, but even after we began to understand the scope and scale of what was happening to the Jewish people of Europe, our response was inadequate and deeply flawed. This is a story with enormous relevance today as we are still dealing with questions about immigration, refugees and who should be welcomed into the United States.”

Previous Burns films, including 2007’s The War and 2014’s The Roosevelts – An Intimate History, have touched on the Holocaust. But this one goes deep on the horrific tragedy, and the U.S.’s role in it. “We set out to ask several questions,” Novick told B+C. “One, what did we know, in what way did we find out and to what degree was that information heeded? And two, what did we do?”

Prior to the Holocaust, Jewish people were clamoring to get out of Germany, and Novick said the U.S. was not all that welcoming. “We didn’t let in more than a fraction of the people that we could have,” she said. 

The film is timely in 2022 despite the events of it happening close to a century ago. It touches on nativism and anti-immigrant attitudes, and of course anti-Semitism, all relevant issues today. “When you do history, everything is timely,” said Burns. “There isn’t a film I’ve worked on in the past 45 years that we haven’t been aware, while working on it, that it resonates with the present. None more so than this one.”

Added Novick, “The times we studied [in the film] were times when democracies were in peril, and they are now.”

The U.S. and the Holocaust is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington, DC. Peter Coyote narrates and Liam Neeson, Paul Giamatti and Meryl Streep are some of the voice actors participating in the documentary. 

All three parts are available for streaming at 8 p.m. Sunday, September 18, when part one airs on linear TV. Part two was scheduled for September 19, but moves to September 20 with PBS covering the Queen Elizabeth funeral. Part three is scheduled for September 21. 

The film represents Botstein’s directorial debut. “At the center of our narrative is the moving and inspiring first-hand testimony of witnesses who were children in the 1930s,” she said in press materials. “They share wrenching memories of the persecution, violence and flight that they and their families experienced as they escaped Nazi Europe and somehow made it to America. Their survival attests to the truth of the remark made by journalist Dorothy Thompson that ‘for thousands and thousands of people a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.’”

Burns was asked if he has any concern about American viewers dealing with a range of personal challenges, be it COVID-19 or economic woes or something else, not having the stomach for six hours on the Holocaust. He was quick to dismiss that notion. “If people are watching Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, they can watch this stuff, for crying out loud,” he said. “This is a riveting story.”

Burns’s films include Hemingway, Muhammad Ali, Jazz and Baseball. He said his latest film has changed him “in personal ways that are hard to articulate.”

“We’ve made a significant piece of work,” Burns said, “that is difficult and shocking and moving and heroic.”

Novick called the documentary “an important chapter in our history.” Historical figures who pop up in it include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Scholars who add their perspective to The U.S. and the Holocaust include Daniel Greene, Rebecca Erbelding, Peter Hayes, Deborah Lipstadt and Daniel Okrent. 

“It is revelatory to understand how our country exists in the space between our ideals and the reality,” Novick said. 

The film offers America a unique look in the mirror. “This is us,” Burns said. “We consider ourselves the greatest country on Earth. If we are, we have to be self-critical. We have to examine the corners of our darker past.” ■

The three-part PBS documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, will be available for streaming before parts two and three air on PBS stations. Parts two and three are being shuffled to make room for PBS' coverage Monday (Sept. 19) of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

The documentary is co-directed by Ken Burns.

All three, two-hour, parts will stream immediately on PBS online platforms -- PBS .org and the PBS video app -- for free starting at 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18, when the first part is scheduled to air on PBS TV stations.

Part two, which would have aired at 8 p.m. Monday, will now air at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 20), which bumps part three top 8 p.m. Wednesday.

PBS also said that if coverage of the Queen's funeral preempts regular PBS Kids programming it would be available on the free PBS Kids streaming service. ■

NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor Lester Holt and iconic noncom TV documentary producer Ken Burns will be honored at the Media Institute's 'Free Speech America' Gala. The virtual event will be Wednesday, Oct. 19.

Holt will receive the Freedom of Speech Award, while Burns the American Horizon Award.

Holt's award is for advancing the First Amendment, which is essentially the institute's charter, while the Horizon award is for "leadership in promoting the vitality and independence of American media and communications."

Holt has spent four decades anchoring and reporting the news here and abroad, while Burns has received 16 Emmy awards for his PBS documentaries, most prominently his Civil War documentary series.

Providing remarks for the evening will be FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington. Master of ceremonies will be Media Institute board chair Dick Wiley, former chairman of the FCC and the Wiley in the iconic media law firm of the same name.

Ken Burns film Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness debuts on PBS June 27, with the second part on June 28. The four-hour film looks at 21 diverse youth, between the ages of 11 and 27, across America who are living with mental health challenges.  

Burns executive produced the project and Erik Ewers and Christopher Ewers directed. 

Also: New Ken Burns Mental Health Doc Gets Streaming Exposure 

“Through the experiences of these young people, the film confronts the issues of stigma, discrimination, awareness and silence, and, in doing so, help advance a shift in the public perception of mental health issues today,” according to PBS.  

“We interviewed a diverse group of courageous young people from across the country with a range of diagnoses who spoke openly with us, and shared intimate, and often painful, details of their mental health journeys,” said Erik and Christopher Ewers. “We hope that by bringing these experiences to a broadcast and online audience, our film will help shed light on how commonplace—how truly universal—mental health challenges are, and encourage other young people who are struggling to seek help. As the pandemic has made clear, caring for the mental health of kids, teenagers, and young adults is more vital than ever.”

Hiding in Plain Sight is part of a public media mental health initiative called Well Beings.  

“We hope that this film will save lives,” said Burns. “As a society, we continue to test the resiliency of youth without truly understanding how the stresses of today, including this unprecedented pandemic, are impacting them. Erik and Christopher and their team set out to listen and learn from America’s young people, documenting their experiences and allowing them to share how they are identifying new ways to address mental health challenges. It is a remarkable journey that captures the unique voices of these young people as they navigate an extraordinarily difficult era in our country’s history.”

Florentine Films, Ewers Brothers Productions and WETA Washington produced the film with John F. Wilson and Tom Chiodo exec producing for WETA. 

Burns’ documentaries include Country Music, Baseball and Hemingway. ■ 

Benjamin Franklin, a two-part documentary from Ken Burns, airs on PBS April 4-5. Mandy Patinkin voices Franklin and Peter Coyote narrates the film. 

The documentary “explores the life and work of one of the most consequential figures in American history — a prolific writer and publisher, a groundbreaking scientist and inventor, a world-renowned diplomat and a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution,” according to PBS. 

Burns directed the film. Dayton Duncan wrote the project and David Schmidt produced it. 

Franklin was born in 1706 and died in 1790. 

“Benjamin Franklin was a fascinating and complicated individual who helped shape our contemporary world,” Burns said. “If we see him for more than his long list of accomplishments, we recognize an imperfect man challenging himself and his contemporaries as he tries to understand and improve the world around him. One of the best and most prolific writers of the 18th century, Franklin both embodies and documents the dynamic social, scientific and political changes of this revolutionary age. His story is one of hope, with a faith in the common man. But his shortcomings are also a reminder of this country’s failure to address slavery at the time of its founding and the racial divisions that continue to impact our country today.” 

Scholars weighing in on Franklin in the film include Walter Isaacson, Joyce Chaplin, Clay Jenkinson and Gordon S. Wood.  

Benjamin Franklin is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington. The film streams for free on all station-branded PBS platforms.

Patinkin played Saul in Homeland. ■

PBS is saluting baseball getting back on track by offering the Ken Burns documentary series Baseball on PBS.org and the PBS video app starting March 31. There are nine parts. The free streaming offer concludes April 29.  

The documentary came out in 1994. Burns breaks it into nine “Innings,” starting with “Our Game,” which looks at the birth of the game in the 1840s, and continues through 1900. 

“Burns refutes the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown and traces its roots instead to the earliest days of the nation,” according to PBS. 

Inning 2, “Something Like a War,” looks at the game through 1910 and features Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Christy Mathewson, among others. Inning 3, “The Faith of Fifty Million People,” looks at immigrants flocking to America and taking part in American pastimes. Babe Ruth is introduced. 

As the documentary progresses, the ninth Inning details the game from the 1970s to the 1990s, including free agency, the rise in player salaries, scandals and the battle between labor and management. 

PBS streamed the series for free in early 2020, with Major League Baseball on hold due to the pandemic. 

“The story of baseball is the story of America,” said PBS at the time. “It is an epic overflowing with heroes and hopefuls, scoundrels and screwballs. It is a saga spanning the quest for racial justice, the clash of labor and management, the transformation of popular culture, and the unfolding of the national pastime.”

Ken Burns documentaries have looked at Ernest Hemingway, jazz, the Civil War, Prohibition, country music and our national parks, among many other topics. 

Major League Baseball, having worked out a new collective bargaining agreement between the players association and owners, begins its season April 7. ■

Ken Burns and co-directors Sarah Burns and David McMahon have another knockout project on their hands with Muhammad Ali, a four-part, 7 1/2-hour deep dive into the man considered by many the greatest boxer of all time, and one of the most complicated and divisive figures of the 20th Century. 

Making sure that project gets seen by as many people as possible, a key PBS value, while also helping keep PBS going financially, is Andrea Downing’s job. She’s president of PBS Distribution, walking a complex line between those competing priorities and the parent organization’s government mandate to provide access to educational programming. 

PBS Distribution is a separate limited liability corporation owned by PBS and the big Boston station WGBH. Perhaps unexpectedly, it’s also a for-profit company. Downing, who came to PBS 20 years ago from Discovery, has been working in distribution for the organization since the days when DVDs were the main alternative distribution option. Her organization still does a bit of that, as the overall TVOD business remains a sturdy $2 billion market segment.

About a dozen years ago, PBS got into streaming, initially licensing content to Netflix and Amazon, and then rolling out a series of niche VOD services on Amazon Prime’s Video Channels offering.

“And what we really did is, we decided to be very intentional about our strategy, which is to launch specialty or niche channels,” Downing said. “So we started with PBS Kids. And then we launched PBS Masterpiece. We launched PBS Living, and then we launched PBS Documentaries back in August of 2021.”

That niche approach is paired with free online access to some PBS programming through the PBS Video app, which is available on most major streaming platforms from Apple to Vizio. Within the PBS Video app sits Passport, a video service available to local station subscribers who donate at least $60 a year, and get on-demand access to PBS archives, past seasons of current shows, and early premieres. Passport subscribers also get access to all of Burns’ documentaries, more than 30 features and series from Burns and his collaborators.

“It's important that we have content that's available for free, always,” Downing said. “And then Passport becomes the member benefit” for more substantial donors.

That bifurcated approach was necessitated because PBS is trying to preserve its unique relationship with its local stations and their subscribers, while maximizing revenue from other interested viewers who don’t want to subscribe. 

“We thought long and hard about this, and we wanted to ensure that the value proposition for PBS Passport is the strongest proposition,” Downing said. “In that $60 a year, you're a (station) member, you get Passport, which is a broader service, and you have your direct relationship with your local station. So these (Prime)  channels, they're all at different price points. So you, if you have an affinity, you can certainly go there, but we’re very intentional about Passport being the best value proposition for members.”

Downing said she works closely with Ira Rubenstein, PBS’ chief digital and marketing officer, to balance the two sides of the organization’s distribution, while getting maximum reach for its programming beyond the traditional footprint of local broadcast stations and their subscribers. 

“Ira and I are partners in everything that we do,” Downing said. “He is managing distribution for the free-based distribution, and I run the fee-based distribution, so we're very much coordinated. And our goal is to ensure that our distribution is better and broader than that PBS TV ecosystem, which is complex, versus just one or the other.”

The Muhammad Ali documentary is one example of the full-court press that PBS does with major projects. It debuts at 8 pm Sunday on the PBS Documentaries Prime channel, and also will stream for free on PBS.org and the PBS Video app. 

Importantly, Downing said the programming on Prime Channels has been “really great in terms of continuing to grow the company and provide income that goes back into the purchase of more programming and services. We can think differently about content and bringing in more content, more digital short-form content, as well as long-form content.”

This month, the Prime Docs channel also will add biographical projects about Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and actor Raul Julia, several NOVA science documentaries, and Frontline investigations of 9/11 and Boeing jet problems, among others

The two sides of the PBS operation have also experimented with different release patterns, to try to maximize reach and revenue. One example, Downing said, was a British show set in India called Beecham House, which ITV cancelled after one season.

Rather than taking that one season to broadcast first, PBS made it available both through its free online service and Passport, as well as the for-pay Masterpiece channel on Prime in March, 2020. Beecham House didn’t arrive on the broadcast schedule until the following January. 

“So it was a great opportunity to pilot,” Downing said. “And we got great lift and bumps. And then we didn't put it into the broadcast schedule until the following January, where we then got a second bump. So it worked for public television, for the free side as well as the revenue side.” 

Downing also oversees international operations such as a PBS America channel in the United Kingdom and Australia, and PBS Kids branded channels in Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. For now, however, the company is sticking with the Prime Video Channels approach as a low-cost way to extend its reach and revenues, rather than attempting to add standalone SVOD services on other distribution platforms.

“Like everyone, we're going to continue to evaluate our strategy as the market changes and we're going to adapt as needed,” Downing said. “Right now it works for us, not only because of the managed-service part and taking care of the investment upfront, but it also enables PBS Passport to be on all of these other distribution platforms more prominently. Our goal with these channels is really to support PBS Video, Passport and multiple stations.”

Muhammad Ali, a Ken Burns documentary about the famed fighter, airs on PBS Sept. 19-22. The project began in 2014, said Burns during a Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour session. He mentioned a sign in his editing room that says, “It’s complicated,” and said it applied to his latest project. 

“We’re interested in human beings and their complications,” Burns said. 

Besides boxing, the film touches on civil rights, politics, war, faith and “the definition of Blackness in the country,” said Burns. “What we’re always drawn to are very, very complicated stories.”

Burns’ films include Baseball, The Civil War, The Roosevelts and Country Music. 

He made Muhammad Ali with his daughter, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. 

Burns promises a “warts and all” project, quoting Ali’s daughter Rasheda, that touches not only Ali’s role as a sports and cultural touchstone, but on his philandering and inconsistent role in his children’s lives. 

Rasheda Ali said her father was “onstage” when he was in the ring. “He pretty much put on a show for all the people who tuned in,” she said, and was “sweet and cuddly” at home. “Daddy was a gentle giant for sure,” she added. 

Burns said that “non-performing Ali is available all the way through” the documentary. 

Asked about criticism that he, as a white man, has such a large role in documenting and sharing American history, Burns said he applauded PBS “for the steps they’ve taken,” in terms of funding diverse filmmaker initiatives and hiring a senior VP focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. He added, “Throughout my professional life I’ve tried to tell the story of this country in an inclusive way.”

Burns noted that 40% of the staff on the Ali project are people of color, and 53% are women. That was also the case 25 years ago, he added. 

"We, of course, encourage others to tell their own stories, and we celebrate that," he said. "But I do not accept that only people of a particular background can tell certain stories about our past, particularly in the United States of America."

PBS will team with producer Ken Burns on a documentary series based on the life of boxing legend Muhammad Ali airing in September.

The four-part series, Muhammad Ali, will debut Sept. 19 and will follow the life and times of the three-time heavyweight boxing champion and human rights advocate who is considered one of the most consequential men of the 20th century, said PBS.

Muhammad Ali will look at some of Ali’s legendary fights as well as capture Ali’s principled resistance to the Vietnam War, his steadfast commitment to his Muslim faith, and his complex relationships with Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, who profoundly shaped his life and worldview.

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Burns, PBS and ESPN’s multimedia platform The Undefeated will explore the intersection of sports, race and culture through a series of conversations leading up to the September broadcast, said PBS.

“Muhammad Ali is a national icon whose life and legacy are woven into the fabric of American history,” said PBS Chief Programming Executive and General Manager, General Audience Programming Sylvia Bugg in a statement. “PBS is committed to sharing stories that deepen understanding and reflect a diversity of perspectives, and we’re thrilled to bring this extraordinary biopic to our audiences this fall.”

Hemingway, a three-part, six-hour documentary about the author from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, premieres on PBS April 5. “Interweaving his eventful biography -- a life lived at the ultimately treacherous nexus of art, fame, and celebrity -- with carefully selected excerpts from his iconic short stories, novels, and non-fiction, the series reveals the brilliant, ambitious, charismatic, and complicated man behind the myth, and the art he created,” said PBS. 

The documentary concludes April 7. Burns and Novick direct. Geoffrey C. Ward wrote the project and Burns, Novick and Sarah Botstein produce. 

Jeff Daniels provides the voice of Ernest Hemingway, whose novels include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. 

Burns said the perception of Hemingway is different from the true Hemingway. “We were drawn to trying to get at a real Hemingway,” he said in a TCA press tour panel. “And I think the persona of the wildman, the drunk, the bar guy, the big-game hunter, the big-sea fisherman, is sort of what we inherit, the baggage we carry. But almost immediately we began to see how thin and frail that was, not just for him, but in fact.”

Between his prose and his letters, Hemingway revealed his true self, said Burns, mentioning “how much he was struggling every day to maintain that discipline to touch those moments common to us all that are universal, but also wrestling with a whole set of demons, a whole set of problems that begin to betray the mask of the he‑man that he built for himself.”

Burns and Novick tackle a complicated character, one whose masculinity, to some, went over the line into toxic. “It’s tempting to say that Hemingway’s macho bluster doesn’t hold up well in the light of the 21st century,” said the New York Times, but it didn’t go unnoticed in the 20th either.”

 “As I confronted all of this negative stuff, it became important that the art transcended it and basically didn't excuse it,” said Burns. “And we do not excuse him. We hold his feet to the fire.”

Novick started the project not liking Hemingway all that much, and wondering what it would be like for the viewer to spend six hours with him. “He was so terrible to so many of the great friends he had,” she said. “And he had a talent for becoming alienated from people who cared about him, a pretty impressive talent, and hurting people in the way he betrayed them in his work.”

“And yet at the end, I think having really spent the time we have tried to do to get under his skin, as Edna [Irish novelist O’Brien] would say, I felt a lot more compassion for him and his struggles and his demons...than I did at the beginning,” added Novick. 

Meryl Streep voices Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn. 

Daniels was drawn to learn more about Hemingway who, like the actor, spent a lot of time in Michigan, when he took on the project. “Like Edna was saying, he inhabits the skin of his opposite, and that's what actors do,” said Daniels. “That's what great artists do. And nice to know that those of us who are acting and do that didn't invent it. People like Hemingway did.” 

Hemingway died by suicide in 1961. 

Burns said he starts every project with the anxiety that he’ll never pull off the mission. “We bite off more than we can chew,” he said, “and then learn how to chew it.  

Ken Burns’s documentary Country Music begins on PBS Sept. 15. The film has eight parts and runs for 16 hours, as the documentarian takes a deep, deep dive into country’s place in music, and in American culture and history.

Burns spoke with Multichannel News about the “four-letter words” that define every country tune. Here’s an edited transcript of the conversation.

MCN: Why country music?
Ken Burns: We’re always looking for stories in American history that are firing on all cylinders. Who would’ve thought that this music that conventional wisdom suggests is white and conservative is, in fact, all about race and class and strong women? This was a wonderful revelation for all of us.

We quote songwriter Harlan Howard in our introduction, saying that country music is three chords and the truth. That is basically admitting that it lacks the sophistication and the complication of classical and some forms of jazz. But the part about the truth, it is dealing with the universal human experiences that we all share. That would be two four-letter words most of us would rather ignore. So we superficialize country music, say it’s just about pickup trucks, good old boys, six-packs and hound dogs. Those four-letter words, love and loss, are at the heart of almost every country song.

MCN: How much of a fan of country were you before taking this on?
KB: I’m a child of R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. I worked at a record store when I was a teenager in Ann Arbor. Of course, Johnny Cash crossed over and you understood that the roots of a lot of stuff the Beatles and the Rolling Stones liked was country. You knew that Bob Dylan went to Nashville and did a series of records there. But it wasn’t the music I knew, and that’s better.

I’ve never made a film where I’ve known about the subject. A couple films, Baseball and Vietnam, I thought I knew, and then every single moment of the production was a humiliation of what I didn’t know.

MCN: For those who say, I’m not into country, this isn’t for me 
— 
KB: That’s who I made the film for! I knew I had the country fans.

We bring lots of folks into our editing room. We invite what we call “warm bodies,” including people who can’t know anything about filmmaking and aren’t necessarily country fans.

There were the country music people, including executives from the Country Music Association, who came to a screening in cold Walpole, New Hampshire, in February. And they just shook their heads and said, “We learned more about Nashville and our profession than we ever knew before.”

We had a middle group, which was, “I don’t really know a lot about country music.” At the end of the screenings, [they said], “I didn’t know how much I did know — how many songs are part of my hard drive, my emotional hard drive, songs somebody sang to me, I fell in love over that song.”

One guy said, “Ken, I’ve loved everything you’ve done, but country music, big question mark.” After four days of screenings, he was a puddle, just completely undone, sobbing out of control. He spent the last year and a half apologizing. I said, you don’t need to apologize. I’m a storyteller. I want to introduce you to something new.

When people ask who I made it for, I made it for everybody.

MCN: Who’s a country figure who emerged in your research as vital to the scene?
KB: I just didn’t appreciate Loretta Lynn as much as I should’ve. To me she was just Coal Miner’s Daughter. You see her coming out with “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Loving on Your Mind)” the year that the National Organization for Women is founded and women’s liberation goes into the lexicon. She’s not joining any political party, she’s not joining any movement. But she was speaking for these women.

Nobody — not Grace Slick, not Joan Baez — was singing about those things in rock and folk.

MCN: I have to ask — does “Old Town Road” make it into the film?
KB: No, no. We were done well before that. But the whole film is that. It’s the best-selling single of all time, by a black, gay rapper [Lil Nas X]. It speaks to everything in every episode of our film, which is that the presumption that only white people listen to country music and black people only listen to black music is insane.

These are hybrids, mixtures, alloys that are stronger than their constituent parts.

Complete Coverage: TCA 2108 Summer Press Tour 

PBS will develop several new documentaries on a variety of topics, including Woodstock and the Civil War, the company announced Monday (July 30) during its Television Critics Association summer press tour session. 

PBS' American Experience will team with Barak Goodman to develop Woodstock, a two-hour documentary that will air in 2019 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the historic three-day concert.

The documentary will examine the tumultuous decade that led to the concert through the voices of those who were present for the event, according to company officials.

PBS will also develop Reconstruction: America After The Civil War, a four-hour documentary executive produced and hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Airing in spring 2019, the documentary will take a broad view of the Reconstruction era and its aftermath, beginning with the hopeful moment of war’s end and emancipation in 1865 and extending through 1915 and Jim Crow segregation, according to the network.

PBS will team with Ken Burns and Goodman on a new three-hour documentary, The Gene: An Intimate History, that will air in spring 2020. The documentary, inspired by Siddhartha Mukherjee’s best selling book The Gene: An Intimate History, will use science, social history and personal stories to weave together a historical biography of the human genome while also exploring the breakthroughs in understanding the impact genes play on heredity, disease and behavior, the company said.