Taylor Sheridan is used to being top dog, but on Amazon and Apple TV’s digital channel chart, he is being crushed by what is being described as the best war documentary ever made.
The American Revolution is a 12-hour miniseries in six parts, which premiered on PBS on November 16, 2025, to rave reviews. Thanks to the volume of people watching the show on the PBS app, it has surpassed Taylor Sheridan’s “hate-watch” series, Landman, on Amazon and the mighty Spartacus on the Apple TV store. What is more, the miniseries does not disappoint anyone.
You would expect that after centuries, all that needs to be said about the founding of America has been done to death. It seems not to be the case, as this series has captured the attention of critics in particular, who, until the latest review, had given it a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The series’ synopsis reads:
“Examining how America’s founding turned the world upside-down as the thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic Coast rose in rebellion, won their independence and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent.”
The production of the series was a massive undertaking, with the crew filming for half a year in over 150 locations around the United States, attempting to capture real-life events, like a 2024 solar eclipse, to reenact events from almost 300 years ago with authentic precision. It seems to have paid off massively with huge viewership and some amazing reviews to suggest that it is worth sitting through its feature-length episodes.
‘The American Revolution’ Is a Must-Watch for History Fans
Director Ken Burns, who was responsible for one of the greatest documentaries on American history ever made in 2015’s Ken Burns: The Civil War (which still holds 100% and 98% scores from critics and audiences, respectively), barely misses a beat in his latest epic account of one of the most world-changing moments of the last 2000 years.
In a review from the Boston Globe, Chris Vognar calls the series a “dense, exhaustive, and, yes, highly rewarding march through a period of early American history that treats generalizations and clichés the way patriot mobs treated suspected loyalists.” For those who are looking for something sugar-coated and stylized, then his may not be for you, but for anyone who is looking for a historical epic “Ridley Scott would never make,” then The American Revolution “sidesteps romanticism of the period and strips away myth with a grounding in granular reality.” In short, this is the real American Revolution and not Hollywood’s take on it.
The audience score for the series is 77% at the time of writing, but that does a huge disservice to the series as a whole. Of the four negative reviews, all of which give the series 1 star, one takes offense at the omission of the Dutch in the narrative, another doesn’t like the series pointing out modern flaws while assessing the past, and one simply comments, “It is what it is.” In the main, audiences have been as enthralled with the sprawling series as much as critics, and it is clear that it has drawn quite a crowd since its quite release.