PBS’ “The Roosevelts” by Ken Burns an addictive 14-hour, 7-night ride

Our week-long national history lesson begins Sunday, 7-9 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS, continuing in two-hour chunks nightly through the week, as PBS star filmmaker Ken Burns schools us in “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.”

Make room on the DVR, this one’s addicting.

The entire 14-hour, seven-night experience of Burns’ latest opus is an engaging and at times surprising marathon, running through the chronology of Theodore, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, and touching on social movements, technological changes and, not least, wars and methods of warfare that shaped their lives. And vice versa.

The infidelities, the gossip, the mother-in-law issues! Those angles, plus the way the media dutifully kept FDR’s polio out of the headlines and his ungraceful efforts out of the newsreels contribute to our understanding of the times. (Burns has located a few glimpses of FDR struggling to stand or walk that are sadly illuminating.)

Some will find the tone overly celebratory, at times almost worshipful of this American dynasty. Certainly it’s not critical enough on crucial subjects. Students of the Holocaust will be aware of numerous books and films treating Roosevelt’s indifference to the plight of European Jews in depth. Burns doesn’t explore the Presidential inaction that cost so many lives.

Yet the trove of photographs is so engaging, the family dynamics so curious, the overall story so epic in nature, it’s a rewarding investment of time.

The fact is, these one-percenters devoted much of their lives to improving the lot of the masses. That’s a theme Burns returns to often: why would these privileged, wealthy people devote themselves to public service, sometimes pushing radical agendas, like the New Deal?

“What we do is sort of engage mystery,” Burns said. “We don’t solve it.”

The scope of the project is enormous, and not just in terms of timespan. The film begins with Teddy’s birth in 1858 and ends with Eleanor’s death in 1962. The bare bones of the tale are bizarre enough: Theodore becomes the 26th president of the United States, and his beloved niece, Eleanor, marries his fifth cousin, Franklin, who becomes the 32nd president.

Tragic losses in the family and mental health issues heighten the drama. The changing culture, the gains of minorities and women, the isolationist attitudes of most Americans and the national impact of New York state politics are intriguing sidelights.

The unbelievably flashy Teddy, working the Rough Rider image apparently to over-compensate for his sickly start as a child; the chin-up, camera-ready aristocratic Franklin, seemingly built for caricature; and the wise, altruistic and long-suffering Eleanor become knowable personalities over the course of the project. (Check the episode guide here.)

The recurring suggestion is that somehow they felt it was their destiny to lead.

In his erudite way, Burns told TV critics that he and long-time collaborator Geoffrey Ward (who wrote the script) have always found the Roosevelts “irresistible, deeply flawed, inspirational, complicated human beings central to an understanding of the national narrative that we call an American history.” Most of the historians who weigh in (notably biographers Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham) are inclined to downplay the flaws.

Burns once again employs celebrities to read from key characters’ diaries, letters and such. Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti and Edward Hermann provide the voices of Eleanor, Teddy and Franklin, respectively. (Streep is wonderful, as usual, but seems to underplay the impossibly high register and sing-song phrasing of Eleanor’s notorious voice.)

The film tiptoes around insinuations of Eleanor’s affairs with women and is careful to avoid details about Franklin’s better known liasons.

“The film sticks to the facts,” Burns said. “You don’t want to get into psycho-biography in any way.”

And yet… there’s plenty of psycho-bio offered in the interpretation of Teddy’s hyper-masculine hijinks, in the triangle formed by Eleanor, Franklin and his mother (and their unusual living arrangements), and in the effects on the national psyche of FDR’s outward optimism during wartime.

Feel free to analyze.

Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp