‘Smithsonian’s Great Battles’ Loses Civil War Buffs

Had the 13-episode “Smithsonian’s Great Battles of the Civil War” existed in some era before Ken Burns’ landmark epic, it might have been a perfectly suitable television aid for understanding America’s most dramatic event.

But producer-writer-director Jay Wertz’s haphazard approach, focusing on key Civil War battles at the expense of a cogent narrative flow covering the war’s developments, places this “Civil War” wanna-be far down the list of essential viewing for buffs.

Wertz injects one innovation here, but it’s typically handled in a clumsy manner. Key battles are introduced with a detailed, computer-generated map indicating Northern and Southern lines, the local topography and a map legend--all of it resembling a screen image in a CD-ROM program.

Unlike CD-ROM, however, the maps flash past with no time to study details. In such complex battles as Shiloh (described in the second episode, airing Jan. 5 on The Learning Channel) or even in an elementary shoot-’em-out like First Bull Run (airing in tonight’s opening episode), the strategic subtleties employed by generals in the field are thus glossed over.

Narrator Richard Dreyfuss sounds urgent about his business, but he never really makes any of these battles come alive. Dreyfuss has to carry the series on his own (with occasional visits by other actors such as Charlton Heston as Lincoln), since the series’ extremely conventional use of period paintings, photos and film of re-created battles makes this the most visually dull of all TV Civil War projects.

An exception occurs in the second episode, which surveys the war’s early naval campaigns, highlighted by the standoff between the Union ironclad ship Monitor and its Confederate opponent, the Merrimack (which Wertz calls “The Virginia”). For the first time in the series, we get a sense of the war as these two ships fire at each other.

If only the rest of this history (or, at least, the two episodes reviewed) were as dynamic. Even the reliable historian James McPherson’s commentaries aren’t enough to guide us through the program, which often grinds to a halt with such dull passages as--believe it--the technology of guns in the 1860s.