While not as long as his more expansive documentaries, Ken Burns’ Thomas Jefferson is a solid, but not great, look at the nation’s third president.

Burns tells Jefferson’s story in two parts. The first part is “Life/Liberty: Our Sacred Honor” while the second part is “Liberty: The Age of Experiments/The Pursuit of Happiness.” In the first half, Burns explores Jefferson’s youth and his early political career. During the second half, the focus turns to Jefferson’s later career as Secretary of State, Vice President, President, and his retirement at Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson has gone down in the history books as one of America’s greatest presidents. He was what one would refer to as a renaissance man with his many interests. Beyond working in politics and diplomacy, he was both a scholar, philosopher, and architect. The man designed his own home! Jefferson came of age during the Enlightenment (1685-1815) and there’s no doubt it impacted his own thinking. He became one of America’s biggest champions for declaring independence from England and the crown. But even though he was leading an active political life, he suffered from personal loss at home with wife Martha Jefferson Wayles dying in 1782.

Beyond the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson helped bring political parties to the United States with the creation of the Democratic-Republican Party. They were opposed to the Federalist Party during the First Party System (1792-1824). The party as a whole would splinter into the National Republicans (Whigs) and what we know today as the Democratic Party. The Whigs would evolve into what we know today as the Republican Party in the 1850s. Meanwhile, the biggest achievement of his presidency was the Louisiana Purchase.

There’s an irony that comes with him penning the Declaration of Independence even as he owned slaves. Of the more than 600+ slaves owned by Jefferson, he only freed ten of them or consented to their leaving Monticello. It isn’t lost on me that that those freed are members of or have ties to the Hemings family. Even before the 1998 Y-DNA study, their emancipation is reason enough to have believed in Thomas Jefferson having an affair with Sally Hemings.

Burns would not be doing his due diligence in a documentary on Thomas Jefferson if he did not talk to historians about the then-rumored affair between the president and Sally Hemings. Going to production, it was just a rumor so historians debated whether he did or didn’t have an affair. At the time, John Hope Franklin was of belief that Jefferson had an affair with Hemings and fathered children with her. Everything would come to light in due time.

There’s a key difference between watching this documentary upon broadcast in February 1997 and watching it after the 1998 Y-DNA study became public. The publication led to both Joseph Ellis (Founding Brothers) and Andrew Burstein changing their minds on whether Jefferson had fathered a child with Hemings. Interestingly, Ellis’s American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson was published in the same year that the documentary aired.

During his retirement, Thomas Jefferson went on to found the University of Virginia in 1819. A few years prior, Jefferson began to reconcile with John Adams in 1812. They would later exchange 158 letters until their deaths on July 4, 1826.

I’m all for watching presidential documentaries but my problem with the two-part documentary on Thomas Jefferson is that it felt too dependent on audiences watching paintings and video of Monticello against the backdrop of voiceovers. It isn’t just that but they are paired with voice-overs of either narrator Ossie Davis or the actors reading the words of Jefferson, family members, or friends. Maybe it’s also my headspace and focus in a post-January 20 world but I just found it too dry and not engaging or engrossing enough. I needed something more and unlike other Ken Burns documentaries, this one just didn’t do enough for me.

If you’re going into Thomas Jefferson wanting more, I would recommend reading Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham. It’s a lengthy biography but it’s probably the best single-volume book out there on the former president.

DIRECTOR: Ken Burns
SCREENWRITER: Geoffrey C. Ward
NARRATOR: Ossie Davis
VOICE CAST: Sam Waterston, Philip Bosco, Blythe Danner, Amy Madigan, Michael Potts, with Julie Harris, Derek Jacobi, Arthur Miller, George Plimpton, Adam Arkin, Murphy Guyer, Caitlin Baucom, Gwyneth Paltrow
FEATURING: Natalie Bober, Daniel Boorstin, Andrew Burstein, Joseph Ellis, Clay S. Jenkinson, Gore Vidal, George Will, Garry Wills, John Hope Franklin, James Oliver Horton, Julian Bond

Thomas Jefferson aired February 18-19, 1997 on PBS. Grade: 3.5/5

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