Fans of Ken Burns’ “Baseball” think they have heard all there is to say on Jackie Robinson, who was featured in some fashion in almost all nine of the episodes in the classic 1994 documentary series. They may be surprised to learn, in that case, that Burns has felt the need to go deeper into the Jackie Robinson legend, specifically with an eye on tearing down the mythology so ingrained into our brains.
Burns is coming out with a new, two-part documentary called “Jackie Robinson,” which will air on PBS on April 11 and 12. In an appearance with Skip Gates at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington, D.C., Burns explained the desire to reconsider the Robinson myth, hoping “to communicate something of a very complicated, multi-generational African-American family, but also a great love story, not perfect.”
Burns goes on to promise viewers all the “warts and angles, and that was important to convey something that looks familiar to us and not something so smothered in mythology, as Jackie unfortunately has become.”
We will have to stay tuned to find out exactly what these “warts and angles” are. If you can’t watch it live on PBS, you can pre-order the two-disc DVD set from Amazon for $17.99. Unfortunately, the Blu-Ray available on Amazon is not readable in North America, so if that is your preferred method of watching, you will have to take advantage of the current Ken Burns sale (15 percent of all titles) to pre-order at the online PBS shop.
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