- Network: Apple TV+
- Series Premiere Date: Apr 12, 2024
Critic Reviews
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Whether singling out characters like the gender-bending Chevalier d’Éon, taking us to the theater, regaling us with armonica and piano recitals, or indulging us in Temple’s first blushes of love (and lust), Franklin takes enough narrative detours to more robustly tell this quintessentially American tale.
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Even though it has some issues, Franklin is an addictive look at one of the most fascinating people in American history, led by a scintillating performance from a first rate actor.
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It’s all those layers of personality, and Michael Douglas’ uncanny ability to make those facets come to life, that save the day in “Franklin.”
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What Van Patten and his crew accomplish is the feeling of a new nation being forged in the waning embers of an old empire and the cautious optimism all parties feel toward that potential.
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[Michael Douglas is] an inspired choice to portray the legendary Founding father and stateman Benajamin Franklin in a lavish if leisurely eight-hour docudrama. [22 Apr - 12 May 2024, p.5]
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While some of the French figures on the show blur together, and while the eight episodes do at times feel longer than is necessary for this particular story, Douglas keeps it all quite watchable.
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Very enjoyable if not always convincing.
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Franklin is too composed and unruffled in its storytelling to be a gripping spy thriller, but it also juggles too many plotlines at once to be considered a straightforward biopic. Yet every scene where Douglas inhabits this seemingly larger-than-life person humanizes an American hero — and reasserts that this may have just been the role he was meant to play at this stage in his career.