Trying To Hype History

By Richard Zoglin

SHOW: LINCOLN

TIME: DEC. 26 AND 27, ABC

THE BOTTOM LINE: A network attempt to duplicate The Civil War is filled with stars but short of eloquence.

The Civil War was not just the pivotal event of American history. It . provided a milestone in TV history as well. The astonishing popularity of Ken Burns' 12-hour mini-series, which aired on PBS in September 1990, profoundly shook the TV world. On PBS, attempts to duplicate The Civil War's success have ranged from big-event mini-series like Columbus and the Age of Discovery to countless American Experience documentaries. The commercial networks too have jealously eyed the program's hefty ratings. It was only a matter of time before one of them took a chance on a similar effort. Which is the reason for Lincoln.

Airing in two parts on ABC, this four-hour documentary follows the Civil War model by combining archival photographs with excerpts from contemporaneous diaries and letters. The producers -- Philip Kunhardt Jr., a former managing editor of LIFE magazine, and his two sons Peter and Philip III -- have drawn on famous Mathew Brady portraits, as well as an extraordinary collection of Lincoln photos assembled by the elder Kunhardt's grandfather, Frederick Hill Meserve. There is music by Alan Menken (Aladdin), narration by James Earl Jones and readings by a stellar cast of Hollywood celebrities as the voices of the principals. All of them paying tribute to the most sainted figure in American history. How could it miss?

It misses. Lincoln, despite good intentions and a great subject, is a textbook case of wrongheaded network decision making. One problem is the all- star voice-overs. Richard Dreyfuss, Oprah Winfrey, Glenn Close, Richard Widmark, Rod Steiger and Arnold Schwarzenegger (as Lincoln's Bavarian-born secretary, John G. Nicolay), among many others, seem to have been recruited mainly for marquee value. Their too famous voices distract from the subject matter; nor do they bring any particular eloquence to their tasks, least of all Jason Robards, who overdoes the corn-pone twang as the most uncharismatic Lincoln imaginable.

Because it is framed around the Civil War (Lincoln's early life is covered only briefly in flashbacks), the series seems unduly repetitive of Burns' work. The writing is uninspired (on the Battle of Gettysburg: "It was the showdown of the war. Whoever won here might well claim victory overall"). And there is a woeful shortage of analysis. Significantly, one element of The Civil War that the Kunhardts did not copy was the use of historians to provide onscreen commentary. They are missed. We get plenty of piquant details about Lincoln's personal life -- his fits of depression, his estrangement from his ( father, his big feet -- but virtually no attempt to relate these to his public life, or to explain the qualities that made him a great President.

Even basic political matters are left hazy. Before the election of 1864, Lincoln predicted, "I am going to be beaten, and beaten badly." Another fit of depression, or was he in real political trouble? He wound up, of course, winning decisively. Why? No clues here. The documentary spends far more time on melodrama, especially the events leading up to Lincoln's assassination. It's an effort to hype a story that, as The Civil War should have proved, doesn't need it.