The Sixties
Executive produced by Emmy® Award-winning producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman (HBO's John Adams and The Pacific), and Emmy® Award-winning producer Mark Herzog (History's Gettysburg), The Sixties explores the most transformative decade of the modern era in America.
- Metascore64
- 2014-2014
- 1 season
- CNN
- Documentary
Executive produced by Emmy® Award-winning producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman (HBO's John Adams and The Pacific), and Emmy® Award-winning producer Mark Herzog (History's Gettysburg), The Sixties explores the most transformative decade of the modern era in America.
Season 1 Episode Guide
10 Episodes 2014
Episode 1
Television Comes of Age
Thu, May 29, 2014 42 mins
Americans gathered around "the tube," to be informed and entertained by the news, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, I Dream of Jeannie, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and more. Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Dick and Tom Smothers, Carol Burnett, Dick Cavett, Diahann Carroll, Carl Reiner, Vince Gilligan, Petula Clark and others describe how the ground-breaking, rule-breaking, norm-bending dramas, historical events, and sitcoms reflected and influenced who we were.
Episode 2
The World on The Brink
Thu, Jun 5, 2014 42 mins
The heady days of Camelot were clouded by the political and military tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Marvin Kalb, Richard Reeves, Robert Dallek, Sergei Khrushchev and more explain how close the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought us all to World War III - and how two nuclear superpowers moved from near confrontation to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Episode 3
The Assassination of President Kennedy
Thu, Jun 12, 2014 85 mins
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is examined through eye witness accounts, details of the original investigation, and films of the assassination itself. Also examined is the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.
Episode 4
The War in Vietnam
Thu, Jun 19, 2014 42 mins
From just several hundred advisers at the start of the decade, to more than 550,000 American troops by the end of it, the escalation of the war in Vietnam - and the fighting and the dying - brought social and political polarization back home. It was also televised - and, the more Americans saw of the war, the more unpopular the conflict became. Tim O'Brien, Frederik Logeval, Karl Marlantes, Neil Sheehan, Andrew Bacevich, George Herring, Tom Hayden, and Philip Caputo discuss the Gulf of Tonkin, and LBJ, for this most complex of American stories.
Episode 5
A Long March to Freedom
Thu, Jun 26, 2014 86 mins
An in-depth look into Martin Luther King Jr. and his courageous efforts to lead the civil rights movement is explored through interviews and film clips. Freedom Riders, the March on Washington, and Selma to Montgomery are revisited.
Episode 6
The British Invasion
Thu, Jul 10, 2014 40 mins
A new wave of British bands and artists enter and impact mainstream American culture.
Episode 7
The Space Race
Thu, Jul 24, 2014 40 mins
In the midst of the Cold War, America falls behind in the manned exploration of space with the USSR. Then President Kennedy pledges that America will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, capturing the fascination of the world..
Episode 8
1968
Thu, Jul 31, 2014 43 mins
The year 1968 was a tumultuous one for many Americans. The end of the innocence of the decade is brought about the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War and violent Civil Rights protests.
Episode 9
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Thu, Aug 7, 2014 40 mins
Gloria Steinem, Robert Kennedy, Jr., former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, Cecile Richards, Marlo Thomas, Douglas Brinkley, and Gail Collins discuss how feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, conservatism, and the gay rights movements were fueled by deep yearnings for freedom by a generation unwilling to wait.
Episode 10
Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll
Thu, Aug 14, 2014 40 mins
American culture changed fundamentally from the beginning to the end of the 1960s as the tastes, morals, and politics of the Baby Boomer generation came to define America. Jann Wenner, Grace Slick, David Wild, Leonard Steinhorn, Tom Wolfe, Douglas Brinkley, Tom Hanks, and more describe how beatniks, Haight-Ashbury, Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, hippies, and Hell's Angels became counter-cultural touchstones that still resonate today.
