Back in 1990, Ken Burns made his reputation with "The Civil War," a sprawling, mutlipart documentary that caused a sensation, set a standard and sealed the style he's applied to practically everything he's done since — measured and hypnotic (some would say slow), with photos and paintings scanned for revealing detail, actors reading primary documents and, more likely than not, the voice of narrator Peter Coyote guiding you through.

With the six-part "The American Revolution," premiering Sunday and continuing nightly through Friday on PBS, Burns' longtime home, he has created a sort of prequel to that series, looking at a war for independence that was also a civil war and in which enslaved Black Americans and Indigenous peoples played a part. Burns has crossed this subject before, with fil

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