Ken Burns does masterful job with "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History"

Another Ken Burns project, another masterpiece.

At a running time of 14 hours, "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History" could have been as tedious as a Senate filibuster, but thanks to rich language, emotional commentary and some of history's most colorful characters, the seven-night documentary never feels like a chore.

Early in the first episode, former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham compares the Roosevelts saga to the work of Shakespeare, a claim that Burns backs up with compelling stories about how both presidents dealt with hardships — Teddy lost his mother and first wife within 24 hours of each other while Franklin battled polio and the Nazis — in their own defiant ways.

"Teddy could always outrun his demons," notes historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. "FDR had to sit with them."

Burns has recruited another stellar cast to provide voice overs, including narrator Peter Coyote and Meryl Streep as Eleanor, but it's the historians like Goodwin who really draw you in. Geoffrey Ward, who wrote much of the script, is particularly compelling, choking back tears when he talks about Franklin's polio, an affliction he himself suffered from as a child.

"The Roosevelts" isn't perfect. The soundtrack is so pedestrian and repetitive you'll wish you could turn down the background music and just concentrate on the melodic commentary. Burns glosses over much of the private lives of Eleanor and Franklin, particularly allegations of affairs, as if that sort of drivel strays too far into TMZ territory.

Not that Burns isn't a stickler for details. Time and again, he provides specifics — Franklin's steel braces weighed 14 pounds; Teddy and son Kermit killed 512 animals, including nine giraffes, in a post-presidency safari; Franklin's blood pressure after watching a film biography of his old boss Woodrow Wilson was 240/130. Those statistics may seem academic, but it adds wonders to the storytelling and reminds us that we're dealing with a filmmaker who has done his homework.

Now it's time to do yours. It'll be the best class you'll take this semester.

Neal Justin • 612-673-7431