It has been a strange and wonderful thing to watch Apple TV-Plus become an unassuming home for great historical content. While its science-fiction shows flounder, its dramas go unappreciated, its “Peanuts” specials go ignored, and its breakout series “Ted Lasso” having concluded, the Apple-backed streaming service has found a modest business producing much of the finest historical content in recent memory.
Whether it’s the Tom Hanks-backed WWII productions “Greyhound” or “Masters of the Air,” the excellent Civil War drama “Manhunt,” the contrarian documentary “Lincoln’s Dilemma,” or auteur epics like “Napoleon” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Apple TV-Plus has shown its willingness to throw massive sums at history series for a niche crowd of enthusiasts.
The newest of these is “Franklin,” a miniseries from former HBO chairman Richard Plepler and screenwriter Kirk Ellis, who both helped develop the “John Adams” miniseries. Borrowing from their prior experience adapting the popular David McCullough book into a vehicle for one of Paul Giamatti’s greatest performances, this newest series adapts Stacy Schiff’s A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America into an eight-episode political drama — which just had its finale on May 17.
The series has thus far gone relatively ignored in the wider pop culture, a victim of the oversaturation of the streaming economy. However, the nominal reception it has received has been relatively lukewarm to negative. Its Rotten Tomatoes audience rating is 52 percent, with mainstream critics being mixed — some calling it “crackling,” “addictive,” “nuanced,” and “beautifully textured,”
