Where the Buffalo Roamed

KEN BURNS HAS TAKEN for the subject and title of his latest project the ancient cattle of the Great Plains, the American buffalo (Bison bison to the scientists). Like all Burns’s subjects—baseball, the Civil War, country music, the West itself—it is an unerring straight shot to the heart of Americana. Burns is a filmmaker in the “Dad Canon” school, telling historically big, emotionally charged stories with a certain middlebrow slickness, or virtuosity, as you prefer it; with a decorous NPR liberalism rendered palatable across the aisle by his love for America; with a slightly basic but always conscientiously thorough broad brush; with an impeccably sourced (and inevitably tearjerking) soundtrack; with a lot of heart, a lot of gravitas, and a lot of facts. Burns’s PBS broadcasts inevitably become a kind of popular reference material for their topics. I love him and everything he does.