Amend: The Fight for America

As as critic I would advise viewers short on time to watch only the first and last episodes. Then, if you like what you see, you can go back and watch parts two through five. If you’re a teacher, though, you may just want to carve out a week or more for your kids to watch and discuss all six hours. It's that good.

It is one thing for historians to break down all the civil rights victories won through the hardest of struggles over decades of sacrifice, terrorism and death. It's something altogether more complex to bring all of that alive in a thoughtful way and make it speak to who and where the TV audience happens to be now. "Amend" achieves this by polishing history with high entertainment value.

Beneath all that polish is substance. Leon and Green succeed at spotlighting under-praised heroes (there’s an especially strong section on Ida B. Wells), while making room for related struggles from feminism to LGBTQ rights to immigration and declining to dumb down the insightful analysis provided by some of our most engaging activists, academics and legal minds.

“Amend” balances enough to keep the viewer perpetually engaged, toggling between various manners of conveying information to move through big American stories, one an episode. It’s perhaps at its best when those stories are about further-flung history.

For a series with such a large scope and often bone-dry subject matter, Amend makes legal history approachable and digestible.

Amend is a significant undertaking in its scope, and the roster of celebrity talent assembled is impressive and eclectic. The one misstep lies in Smith's folksy transitions, which seem tailored to a school-age audience. Granted, it would be great if kids watched this, but the "Schoolhouse Rock" tone he adopts feels out of step with the other voices telling this story.

Despite its flaws, Amend: The Fight For America is a very informative docuseries about a piece of our Constitution that is the most misunderstood and overlooked, especially given its importance to how we live our lives in the U.S.