PBS examines Lincoln's assassination, his enduring mysteries
The whole wide TV world seems attuned to the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, which makes it sort of strange that PBS' lauded "American Experience" feels the time has come to re-examine his death.
"The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" gets next week's mania going when it debuts at 9 p.m. Monday on WTTW Channel 11, but it seems an odd place to start the celebration.
Admittedly, Lincoln has already been pored over by "American Experience" and other historical documentary series, on PBS and elsewhere, and it's hard to find something new to say about him. This episode is largely based on James Swanson's relatively recent 2006 book, "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer." Yet it really focuses more on John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, than it does on Lincoln himself.
Woo-wee. Happy birthday, Honest Abe.
For all that, the 90-minute documentary is nevertheless interesting as filmmaker Barak Goodman traces the paths of Lincoln and Booth as they intersect and then diverge. Lincoln, of course, was the president who anguished over the Civil War, but saw it to its conclusion. He found, in the death of his young son from typhus, a way to process the incredible carnage of the war leading toward a spirit of endurance and mercy that would be reflected in his great second inaugural address.
Booth, meanwhile, was a privileged actor who found fame and an agreeable culture of elitism in the South and who anguished over its defeat, focusing his vengeful rage on Lincoln and casting himself as the holy "instrument of his punishment."
Yet it's Booth who comes to dominate things as he and co-conspirator David Herold head south out of Washington, D.C., on a 12-day bid to outrun the manhunt, while Lincoln's body is carried by rail across the great cities of the north back to downstate Springfield.
"American Experience" draws on many accounts, both stories of the time and analysis from modern historians, but it never trots out Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd," which is sort of mystifying.
Lincoln, very much a divisive figure in life, was deified in death - the first president assassinated but, unfortunately, not the last - to the point where Booth, in effect reading the reviews in the papers, saw how the act he thought courageous was instead viewed as the utmost cowardice, leading him to the brink of suicide. He refused capture when finally hunted down. Booth's attempt to avenge the South instead led the North to inflict its own vendetta through Reconstruction, in marked contrast with the reconciliation Lincoln sought.
In the end, this documentary leaves a viewer disheartened and depressed, as after a senseless tragedy. What a way to start the weeklong Lincoln bicentennial.
"Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency" follows immediately after at 10:30 p.m. with a look at how his background as an Illinois lawyer and representative laid the foundation for what he would later achieve. Think of it as a TV documentary equivalent of Barack Obama's campaign book "The Audacity of Hope."
Better yet, if a bit more academic, is "Looking for Lincoln," at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 11, in which the excellent scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Doris Kearns Goodwin probe various enduring mysteries about the man, from what he really felt about slavery to his sexuality.
If that seems an interesting if unsavory topic for his 200th birthday, it's nothing next to the more macabre "Stealing Lincoln's Body," a new History Channel special debuting at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 16. It traces how Lincoln's body was exhumed and moved time and again in the decades after his death, surviving at least one plot to steal it away before it was placed where it is now in a steel-and-concrete-reinforced vault in Springfield.
So make a wish and blow out the candles, everybody. It's Abe's 200th birthday. Woo-wee, indeed.
<p class="breakhead">Profiles in history</p> <p class="News">WMAQ Channel 5 is marking Black History Month with a series of local profiles on its 5 p.m. Friday newscast. This week, Art Norman focuses on Lafayette and Marguerite Gatling, owners of Chicago's Gatling's Chapel, the largest black-owned funeral home in the nation.</p> <p class="breakhead">And so it stops</p> <p class="News">"Nick News With Linda Ellerbee" celebrates Black History Month with the new special "We Shall not Be Moved" at 8 p.m. Sunday on Nickelodeon. It looks at kids - including two from Chicago and two from Wilmette - fighting racial injustice in their own lives. </p> <p class="breakhead">Going to the dogs</p> <p class="News">The 133rd annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show runs on NBC's cable outlets next week. The first session starts at 7 p.m. Monday on USA with the hounds, which produced last year's Best in Show, 15-inch beagle Uno. It shifts to CNBC at 8 for the two-hour completion of the night before returning to USA for the second and final session at 7 p.m. Tuesday. ... Animal Planet premieres its new series on "Jockeys" at 8 p.m. Friday.</p> <p class="breakhead">Stupefyin' musical</p> <p class="News">Movie musicals don't get any hammier than "Li'l Abner," which tends to de-emphasize the brilliant satire of Al Capp's classic comic strip in favor of yuks that would later fit better on "Hee Haw." But just try watching it and not humming "Jubilation T. Cornpone" afterward. It's at 10:30 p.m. Friday on Turner Classic Movies.</p>