{"id":554369,"date":"2026-06-26T00:31:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T00:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/554369\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T00:31:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T00:31:21","slug":"the-american-experiment-on-netflix-tom-hanks-doc-explores-the-uss-rocky-road-to-greatness-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/554369\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Experiment on Netflix: Tom Hanks doc explores the US\u2019s rocky road to \u2018greatness\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It takes a lot to puncture the self-congratulatory bubble that inevitably materialises around Americans looking back on their long, sometimes glorious, frequently bloody history. But throughout Netflix\u2019s<\/a> new rumination on 250 years of US independence, The American Experiment <\/b>(Netflix, Wednesday), there are recurring signs that Washington\u2019s implacable faith in its own greatness has taken a bit of a beating. Oh, say can you see\u2026 just how fundamentally the American dream has turned sour?<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t immediately apparent across the five-part documentary, produced by Tom Hanks<\/a> and featuring more than 60 experts weighing in on the US\u2019s origins and its enduring fabulosity. But as the series gets into the weeds of US politics, interviewees implicitly acknowledge that all is not necessarily hale and hearty at the centre of Pax Americana.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe I did my duty that day, to see to the peaceful transfer of power under the constitution,\u201d says Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> former vice-president Mike Pence<\/a> when invited to take the temperature of 21st-century American democracy. He is referring to the Capitol riots of 2021 in which a Maga mob stormed the American legislature after Pence came under pressure to overturn the results of an election that saw Joe Biden<\/a> win the presidency from Once and Future Kingpin of the Oval Office, Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

That the US today might not quite be the shining city on a hill is also hinted at by Hillary Clinton<\/a>, who is only half-joking when she describes the electoral college, which gave the presidency to Trump (despite her having won the popular vote in 2016), as \u201can abomination\u201d.<\/p>\n

These glitches in the matrix come amid a bird\u2019s-eye view of America since the 16th century, starting with a young George Washington accidentally sparking the Seven Years\u2019 War between France and Britain (oops) when he charged into unclaimed territory west of Virginia and slam-bang into the French. These and other scenes use staged re-enactments \u2013 usually a death knell to a documentary, but which are here deployed judiciously. It helps that the actors keep their traps shut. We mainly just see them romp around in their Hamilton-esque duds.<\/p>\n

Critiques of the US, when they do arise, are not allowed to intrude on the overarching message: that the American Revolution was a world-changing event and that the US remains singular and unbowed to this day. It certainly has a unique history \u2013 rebellion, Manifest Destiny, slavery, civil war, repression, depression and Trump. The series doesn\u2019t entirely convince you \u2013 or itself \u2013 that there is nowhere else like the US. But across five pacy episodes, it draws you into the grand story of how a British backwater became the most powerful nation in the annals of humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes a lot to puncture the self-congratulatory bubble that inevitably materialises around Americans looking back on their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[356,18,117,4748,19,17,237363,127,33857,107,168249,4855],"class_list":["post-554369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-donald-trump","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mike-pence","tag-netflix","tag-tom-hanks","tag-us","tag-us-250","tag-washington-dc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116813593710452907","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}