The American Revolution

Premise

The documentary miniseries covers the events concerning the American Revolution during the time periods leading up to the Revolution (from May 1754), the years of the Revolution itself (independence declared in 1776), followed by the immediate aftermath of the Revolution in the early years of the new nation and its new government from May 1780 and beyond.

Cast

Interviewees

Rick Atkinson – author

Maggie Blackhawk – legal scholar

Darren Bonaparte – writer

Nathaniel Philbrick – writer

Stacy Schiff – writer

Interviewees – historians

Friederike Baer

Bernard Bailyn

Ned Blackhawk

Christopher Brown

Vincent Brown

Colin G. Calloway

Stephen Conway

Philip J. Deloria

Erica Dunbar

Kathleen DuVal

Joseph Ellis

Annette Gordon-Reed

William Hogeland

Maya Jasanoff

Jane Kamensky

Edward Lengel

Iris de Rode

Alan Taylor

Michael John Witgen

Gordon S. Wood

Serena Zabin

Production

The filmmakers wrote in The Atlantic that the series was filmed for 165 days at more than 150 locations, with weather often dictating logistics; they chased the solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 to the Adirondacks and rapidly staged winter shoots in Providence, Rhode Island, Charlestown, New Hampshire, Tivoli, New York, and Philadelphia over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. They also reported extensive collaboration with re-enactors, including the Jersey Greys, who drilled at night in a snowstorm and built what the team believes is the largest redoubt in North America for the production.

According to the filmmakers, the absence of photography of the period led them to emphasize first-person testimony, period imagery, landscape cinematography, and limited-face reenactments to convey the "uncertainty" of the era. The team said it had created over 100 new maps under geographer Charles E. Frye, aligning scanned 18th-century cartography to modern satellite imagery and correcting for altered rivers, coastal infill, and missing colonial borders; Native nations and towns are prominently marked alongside settler sites.

Release

The release of the series was preceded by a half-hour preview entitled The American Revolution: An Inside Look. The preview aired on PBS from August 2025 on an on-going basis to introduce the series. The series was promoted by PBS with a nationwide tour and site-specific screenings at Revolutionary War locations.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 24 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Examining how America's founding turned the world upside-down as the thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic Coast rose in rebellion, won their independence and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent."

Writing in Vanity Fair, Jordan Hoffman characterizes the series as "loaded with characters, ideas, and perspectives" that make "history feel urgent and new," and highlighted its "stacked ensemble" of voice performers. Hoffman also notes the film's "stately pace" and attention to Loyalists and lesser known participants in the events.

Jennifer Schuessler in The New York Times argues that as a documentary it "aim[s] to strip away the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia" surrounding the founding of the United States. Schuessler noted that the series arrives "in the middle of a culture war," pointing to its "frank discussions of slavery and Native American dispossession" and its depiction of the Revolution as a "hyper-violent civil war that divided families and communities." She observed that the film "doesn't demonize Loyalists" and that its presentation of Native Americans as "members of powerful nations faced with complex choices" may be "the most eye-opening part of the documentary." The article also reported that Burns's "insistence on both inspiration and complexity has played well with audiences, including those well outside the PBS orbit."

Daniel Fienberg describes The American Revolution in The Hollywood Reporter as "smart, thorough, [and] sincere in intent," calling it "rousing, if repetitive." He wrote that the series is "patriotic, pragmatic and familiar," noting that it "fits snugly into the unprecedented tapestry that Burns has been weaving since Brooklyn Bridge." Fienberg praised its attention to "the internal conflicts and hypocrisies of the American Revolution," particularly its treatment of "the celebrations of equality that excluded Blacks and Native Americans," while also remarking that the production "relies heavily on familiar Burnsian tracking shots and zooms" and can feel "dry and a little languid." He concluded that despite its flaws, the series conveys "the optimism that we sometimes forget as we squirm through the latest evolution or devolution of the American experiment."

Writing for Politico, Nathaniel Moore suggests that Burns frames the series as a unifying civic project grounded in a "shared past," and described the cut he saw as heavy on factual narration while inclusive of voices often omitted from Revolutionary histories; he concluded that the film was "entertaining enough" to draw multigenerational audiences together at public screenings.