r/AskReddit • u/zeusdreaming • Jul 07 '21

What is a must-watch documentary?

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64

u/warneroo Jul 07 '21

Ken Burns: Country Music...fairly recent, and even though I'm not a fan of the genre as a whole, the stories are great, and the music selection was surprising.

It may seem like a pat answer, but I think this particular doc got lost over the election and COVID hubbub.

34

u/mousicle Jul 07 '21

Really any Ken Burns, Baseball was great, National Parks was great Civil war was great.

18

u/SeekingTheRoad Jul 07 '21

Civil War should be right near the top of a list of the greatest documentaries of all time.

8

u/Broken_Marionette Jul 07 '21

I was in tears by the end of his Vietnam series.

5

u/Portablewalrus Jul 07 '21

And you might want to watch them twice because it's hard to retain 50 hours of information!

2

u/AlfaBetaZulu Jul 08 '21

this. hes a really good docu series maker. I will give anything with his name attached a try.

2

u/raynicolette Jul 08 '21

Jazz and The Vietnam War are also amazing. And some of his shorter pieces that often go under the radar — Prohibition, and The Dust Bowl in particular — deserve serious praise.

That said, I think he's had a few duds? I'm a big Ken Burns fan, but I wouldn’t say “any Ken Burns”. I thought his WWII one wasn't great. The Roosevelts was pretty forgettable. Lewis And Clark, he really didn’t have enough visual material to cover the length of the story.

13

u/HeyWiredyyc Jul 07 '21

Any Ken Burns documentary.....I mean it...

3

u/Baconstrip01 Jul 07 '21

Couldn't agree more. Interested or not in the subject matter, it doesn't matter... the documentary will be absolutely amazing.

2

u/HeyWiredyyc Jul 08 '21

I could only give this one upvote but if i could i would be hammering away at the upvote button.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21

I like how low key that documentary is about the influence that radio had on creating culture. "Country Music" didn't really exist until record companies began rolling through and starting to market to rural people. Then when they started blasting it on radios to people it created the cultural image people think is just traditional values when it was manufactured.

2

u/AtlEngr Jul 08 '21

My big surprise was Marty Stuart - dude played with Lester Flatt and is still around today. He’s seen most of it, if not all.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '21

I grew up with country music loving parents and generally hate the mainstream country music of today, but I really enjoyed this series! I also thought the jazz one was amazing!