Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns

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Season 1
  • Network: PBS
  • Series Premiere Date: Sep 18, 1994
Season #: 2, 2, 1
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No score yet - based on 3 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
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Critic Reviews

  1. People Weekly
    Reviewed by: David Hiltbrand
    Jun 26, 2013
    100
    Baseball is a monumental achievement, perhaps too monumental for TV. For fans, it is a sumptuous feast. But its 18 1/2-hour length will daunt those without an acute interest in the game.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ken Tucker
    Jun 11, 2013
    83
    Wildly excessive, regularly boring, and, at regular intervals, great, clever fun.
  3. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Zoglin
    Jul 2, 2013
    70
    For baseball lovers it's the World Series, All-Star Game and Fan Appreciation Day rolled into one, with all the hot dogs and frosty malts you can wolf down. It is also a bit much.

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No user score yet- Awaiting 1 more rating

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 1 out of 3
  1. juliankennedy23
    Jun 23, 2014
    6
    Score 6/10 Ken Burns has created a documentary that resembles baseball itself. Overlong with not enough action and everyone around you yappingScore 6/10 Ken Burns has created a documentary that resembles baseball itself. Overlong with not enough action and everyone around you yapping how owners, players and fans have ruined the game. On the plus side disk nine's coverage of the Red Sox curse is a delight. You can see the pain on the faces of the fans as they discuss Bucky Dent's home run or game six. This segment also highlights another strength of using non-experts to discuss the game they love. It is quite refreshing.

    On the bad side outside of sheer length is the constant drumbeat about racism in the game. While Burn's jazz miniseries and certainly the civil war had a place to discuss racism it starts to seem out of place here. There is not a disk or a segment that escapes the constant barrage of how racist baseball was and is. Truth be told baseball reflected America at the times it was played and was neither significantly more or less racist than America as a whole.

    To long and slow for its own good Ken Burns baseball sounds like the old uncle repeating the same stories long after he made his point.    … Full Review »
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