21 Shows To Watch While You’re Recovering From A Food Coma

Actual exported restored frame from the UHD restoration of “The Civil War” series scanned from the original 16mm negative film. (Images via PBS/Florentine Films)

18. The Civil War

If you’ve got a lot of time – I mean, seriously, a lot of time – or want to start your journey into a massive documentary, then check out Ken Burn’s The Civil War. This landmark documentary, first shown in 1990 on PBS, has since become a classic of American television.

Even if you only know it through oddly specific jokes about documentaries or PBS itself, The Civil War is worth checking out. Yes, it’s many hours long (though thankfully broken up into multiple episodes), but that’s only because it is exhaustively researched. It also helps that it’s well-written and includes multiple first-person accounts of Civil War history in both the North and the South. The documentary, which made filmmaker Ken Burns’ career, was nominated for over 40 major television and film awards after its release. It’s seriously a big deal.

Listen closely, and you might even hear some very familiar voices. Actors who completed voicework for the series includes Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, Garrison Keillor, and even Arthur Miller (yes, the Arthur Miller that wrote The Crucible). The care and craftsmanship that went into the creation of the show is clearly visible. If you want to take a deep dive into a singular and transformative event in American history, then definitely check out The Civil War.

Where to watch: Netflix