In the sense that television is a lens through which we view ourselves, it’s as often as not a cracked one, or one smeared with Vaseline, to make things crazier or prettier. It takes a certain kind of restraint and support — given the comparative lack of commercial potential — for TV to engage life as it is, unmediated by writers rooms or reality producers. For that, you’re going to have to turn to public broadcasting.
Filmed in five installments over 34 years, “Two American Families: 1991-2014,” premiering Tuesday on PBS (and available also to stream from the PBS app and PBS.org ), looks at a pair of Milwaukee families — the Neumanns, who are white, and the Stanleys, who are Black, in the aftermath of their breadwinners losing union manufacturing jobs. Although originally planned as a single documentary — the original installment was titled “Minimum Wages: The New Economy” — it becomes over time a story of what hasn’t changed, and how that reality has changed the lives of its subjects.
Directed by Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes, with Bill Moyers as narrator and interviewer, the series bears a resemblance to Michael Apted ‘s poignant British “Up” films, which began in 1964 with “Seven Up!, ” looking at assortment of 7-year-olds and, returning every seven years, ended in 2019 with “63 Up!” That series, which began as an investigation into the effects of class on children’s prospects, became more generally a look into the ups and downs .