Ken Burns’ new PBS documentary series, The American Revolution, portrays the founding conflict as a deeply divided and contradictory civil war rather than a unified struggle for independence. Co-director Sarah Botstein says the series is intended to challenge sanitised national myths by showing how political polarisation and disputes over America’s identity have existed since the country’s creation.

The six-part, 12-hour series took more than nine years to make and covers events from the French and Indian War in 1754 through the Revolution and its aftermath. It uses over 400 voices and nearly 200 first-person accounts, while broadening the focus beyond the Founding Fathers to women, children, Black people and Indigenous nations; it highlights how enslaved people and Native communities were exploited or displaced by both sides. The series is also the first PBS title to reach Nielsen’s top 10 streaming ratings.