Benjamin Franklin

The informative, well-framed and entertaining "Benjamin Franklin," premiering Monday on PBS, explores the life and times of our most colorful founder.

He charted and named the Gulf Stream. He refused to patent any of his inventions — which also include a superior sort of stove, bifocals and the glass harmonica, an instrument for which both Mozart and Beethoven would compose — because “as we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of the opportunity to serve others by an invention of ours, and this we should do generously and freely.” As the person who wrote, “By the collision of different sentiments sparks of truth are struck and political light is obtained,” he might well be dismayed by the obstinate polarization of a government he helped define. With his recognizable grandfatherly mien and sundry colorful extra-political exploits, Franklin is something of a folk character, joshed and lampooned (as in the book and Disney cartoon “Ben and Me,” which attributes his successes to a church mouse) and can seem a supporting player in history rather than one of its prime movers. One calls him the only founder “who evidently had a sense of humor, who was evidently human, who evidently had a sex life.” He was full of contradictions, but you can’t exactly call him a hypocrite; he viewed himself as a work in progress, and progressed, methodically charting his failures to live up to his own ideals and prescriptions. (And he’s been a figure in at least two musicals, “Ben Franklin in Paris” and “1776,” so he has Broadway cred as well.)

There's something comforting about Ken Burns' PBS documentaries dealing with subjects that predate video, since the filmmaker, unlike most of the industry, ...

Enter "Benjamin Franklin," four hours devoted to the Founding Father, capturing all the facets of a man described as "the most famous American in the world" during his time. "Benjamin Franklin" might not be as showy as some of Burns' other works, but like all of them, it's still a keeper." There's something comforting about Ken Burns' PBS documentaries dealing with subjects that predate video, since the filmmaker, unlike most of the industry, eschews dramatic reenactments in favor of a low-tech approach.

The star-studded vocal cast includes Mandy Patinkin (as Franklin) and Paul Giamatti (reprising his Emmy-winning role of John Adams).

Tonight’s Part 1, “Join or Die,” can be yawn-inducing as it dryly maneuvers through Franklin’s rise as a skilled printer, voracious reader and brilliant writer, especially without the advantage of archival footage and witness interviews that enliven some of Burns’ more recent films. But Tuesday’s conclusion of Benjamin Franklin, “An American,” benefits from a far more specific focus on the commencement of the Revolution. How did such a staunch monarchist become a leader of the American Revolution? This question is the driving force in Ken Burns’ latest documentary on revered Founding Father and celebrated inventor Benjamin Franklin. The four-hour event is most engaging whenever it’s endeavoring to solve that puzzle.

PBS' two-part documentary shows our country's most relatable Founding Father – statesman, inventor ... rascal.

"And to think that if Franklin hadn't realized the necessity of compromise, we would not have had a Constitution. So, he tried to weigh all of that and then chose to devote the rest of his life to righting his own wrong, which was first to be a slave owner and then to devote the rest of his life to be an abolitionist." "I think it's particularly true in this film, understanding all of the competing motives of independence," he said. Capturing that context of why Franklin may have had to act against his own beliefs is part of Burns' challenge as a documentarian. He gets it a little bit from Addison and Steele, the British editors of The Spectator, but in some ways he's the first to develop that 'aw shucks,' cracker barrel, informal way of writing." At age 20, he created a list of 13 virtues – among them temperance, justice, chastity and humility – by which he tried to develop his character. Armstrong Dunbar added, "That's the age-old issue, question, vestige, whether or not we're talking about three-fifths of a human being being represented or the call about Black life mattering. Despite Franklin's brilliance, he was a flawed man who was often the first to admit it. And he thought of himself as a scientist and an inventor. His curiosity and creativity knew no bounds, and he's rightfully revered as one of America's true Renaissance men, who was as familiar with wielding words as he was with the application of Newtonian physics. "I think he invents a classic form of American writing," said Isaacson at the press conference. Benjamin Franklin's oft-paraphrased quote, which pops up in the second season of Neflix's drama "Virgin River," is employed by a small-town mayor who begrudgingly takes in someone she dislikes. The first part lays the groundwork for Franklin's apparent brilliance and innovation when it comes to publishing and science.

A conversation with filmmaker Ken Burns on his new documentary 'Benjamin Franklin,' along with author Walter Isaacson and historian Erica Dunbar.

Mandy Patinkin voices Franklin in this 2-part, 4-hour docuseries.

His affairs, the way he mostly ignored Sally, the daughter he had with common law wife Deborah Read, his long forays to London that fed his intellect but made him neglect his family — all of that information isn’t new, and it’s not presented as new. During that time, he left his wife and daughter back in Philadelphia and recreated a domestic life in England. There’s the matter of his “illegitimate” son William, who grew up to become the Crown-appointed governor of New Jersey, and the fact that he was a womanizer on both sides of the Atlantic. In his writings, for example, he acknowledges his biases against Black people, a view which changed over the years but never went away completely. He was also the owner of enslaved people, and someone who initially fought slavery only as a way to have less non-whites (including “swarthy” Swedes, apparently) invade the colonies. But what’s great about the docuseries Benjamin Franklin is that it’s not shy about portraying the Founding Father’s flaws as well as his greatness. Even though he dropped out of school to go live in Philadelphia, he was credited with a number of inventions as well as his famous kite experiment, where he proved that the skies are charged with electricity.

Benjamin Franklin is having a moment. For decades he has hovered on the periphery of popular representations of the American founding.

They show up in the continued attention to his autobiography and other original writings, and in the popular history that translates his work for a broad audience. At the close of 200 years—that is, in 1990—Franklin directed that the fund be split between the city and the state governments, to spend as they pleased. In the 1990s, with the funds now fully available to the state and city governments, officials spread the money even further, using money in Boston to fund medical students and in Philadelphia to create a scholarship fund for students entering trades, as well as funding for the Franklin Institute and community foundations. Like the managers in Boston, the mid-Atlantic managers began to offer less and less support to workers as the 19th century ground on. As laid out in a 1789 codicil to his last will and testament, Franklin gave the money to the towns to be loaned out at 5 percent interest to married men under the age of 25 who were establishing themselves in a trade. Appearing in over a hundred editions before the Civil War, the “private memoirs” of Franklin depict his emergence from obscurity in Boston to business success in Philadelphia. Because only the first portion of the autobiography, covering Franklin’s youth up to about the age of 25, was available in the first decades after his death, publishers usually appended a biography covering the rest of his life. The second episode focuses considerable attention on his wartime diplomacy in France (over his relatively smaller contributions to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), emphasizing the importance of the alliance for American victory in the Revolutionary War. Among his bequests, he left 1,000 pounds each to the towns of Boston and Philadelphia to create a fund for the benefit of young tradesmen. His family was not destitute while he grew up in Boston, but he was the 15th of 17 children, and the youngest son. As Franklin reports, “I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation,” a poignant memory that has resurfaced numerous times in conversations around vaccination generated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 1969 Broadway musical 1776, a Founders Chic precursor, Franklin is the avuncular sidekick to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, dispensing one-liners and the occasional timely advice to keep independence moving. For decades he has hovered on the periphery of popular representations of the American founding.