Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 29 April

Jazz (Burns, 2001)

DocPlay in Australia and New Zealand is an essential streaming service and there’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world.

Any time you feel at a loss for something to watch, head there and you’ll find something that will be worth your time.

Recently, they have added a bunch of titles from the archives of that great American documentarian Ken Burns and you could spend a few years, I reckon, just working your way through those. I count 18 feature films and series available. Titles I can recommend include the two-part biography of architect Frank Lloyd-Wright (1998), the definitive television history of the American Civil War (1990) and the brilliant extended exploration of the phenomenon that is Country Music (2019).

My parents have just been watching the 12-episode series on The National Parks (2009) and I can’t imagine there’s anything more soothing in these troubled times.

Jazz is only 10 episodes but is similarly comprehensive and it shows off Burns’ (and his collaborators’) great strength which is making a comprehensible narrative out of a vast amount of material. Watching a Burns film, you get a clear sense of one event – and sometimes the absence of an event – leading to another.

It starts with the remarkable opening trumpet solo from “Black and Blue” by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra from 1929 and the story of Armstrong bestrides the whole series like the colossus he was.

If you’ve ever been jazz-curious, the series is a great way in, especially when we get to the more difficult eras of bebop, post-bop and hard-bop, etc. – challenging music for challenging times – but if you know where it’s all coming from, musically and socially, it becomes more comprehensible.

10 episodes gives the music time to shine but if you want more, the films spawned an epic box set with about a hundred tracks and also a series of CDs featuring the best of the biggest names that were featured including Bechet, Brubeck, Billie Holiday and more.

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Where to watch Jazz