PBS series gives its regards to ‘Broadway’

I suppose there are people immune to the charms of musical theater, but how very sad for them. As the new six-hour PBS documentary, “Broadway: The American Musical” (tonight through Thursday), makes clear, the musical is a form that, even when it fails as art, brims with life and opportunities for individual excellence and communal transcendence. (I mean: You can have a great time watching a great performance.) It makes no sense that people should suddenly burst into song or dance in the midst of their ordinary business. But in a better world, everybody would.

Hosted by Julie Andrews, it is this season’s big public-television overview documentary, one of those sprawling works that -- like “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “Jazz” and so on -- attempts to eat a subject whole. (“Broadway” director Michael Kantor co-produced the documentary series “The West,” for which Ken Burns was the executive producer.) These films are invariably “American” in some large way -- “Broadway” insists repeatedly that the changing face of the musical reflects national values and aspirations, which can be said, of course, of just about anything -- and come trailing companion books and videos and CDs and tote bags to multiply their glory and revenue. So it is with “Broadway.”

Though its power over the public mind is not as great in the 21st century as it was in the 20th -- when it was the frequent subject of Hollywood movies and its stars were seen regularly on television, doing their star turns -- Broadway remains a street of dreams. Perhaps no other art is so identified with a single place as the musical is with Broadway -- which is really to say Times Square (seen here in photos and film clips, evolving from muddy backwater to a clone of modern Tokyo).

It is not nice to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially one with so shiny a coat and so fair a mane. But though it is full of good things, “Broadway” falls short in various, perhaps unavoidable ways.

In trying to do too much it does too little. Like a five-day tour of six European countries, the series unfolds as a series of cursory glances. You get a couple of seconds of Bert Lahr, a few more of Eddie Cantor, the merest glimpse of Barbra Streisand, the biggest star to have come out of Broadway in the last 40 years. Black theater suffers particularly. Few fully developed personalities or dramatic narratives emerge -- something Burns does well with, even when, as in “Jazz,” he does not fully comprehend his subject.

Nevertheless, the film tags most of the bases and makes clear the historical arc of the art, from star-based revue to story-based musical (comedy or drama) to special-effects spectacular. Without being specifically censorious, Kantor tracks the remaking of the musical as ever-longer-running tourist attraction, the Disney-fication of Times Square and the advent of the blockbuster mentality that, depending on your take, has left the form stronger than ever or completely debased. (“We began to applaud the chandelier for falling in ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ ” notes the late critic Brendan Gill.)

It’s obviously a labor of love. Kantor began filming interviews eight years ago. Subjects, several of whom have since passed on, include Stephen Sondheim (something of a heroic figure here); Carol Channing (very acute, contrary to type); Mel Brooks; Nathan Lane; Harvey Fierstein; critics Gill, John Lahr and Frank Rich; and wise old caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, a professional theatergoer from 1926 until his death last year.

But it is the film clips that make “Broadway” live, and there are some surprising things here, including color footage of the girls of “The Ziegfeld Follies.” There are Fanny Brice and Marilyn Miller, and Julie Andrews singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” and Zero Mostel performing “If I Were a Rich Man.” In such moments you may find yourself standing and applauding, with a lump in your throat.

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‘Broadway: The American Musical’

Where: KCET (PBS)

When: 9 to 11 p.m. today through Thursday

Rating: TV-G (suitable for all ages)

Julie Andrews...Host

Executive producers David Horn and Jac Venza.