Some periods of history are begging to be dramatised. Anything with Anne Boleyn in it, for instance. Recent drama Mary & George, based on real-life mother son duo Mary and George Villiers who slept their way to the heart of the Jacobean court, is another case in point – I’d never heard of the Villiers, but now I won’t shut up about them. Sex! Intrigue! Power! Humanity! The story of Benjamin Franklin in 1776 as told by Apple TV+ in Franklin, on the other hand, could have been left in the history books without anyone feeling hard done by.
Despite the show’s best efforts, absolutely nothing interesting happens to the man himself – or anyone around him – over the course of Franklin’s first three episodes. And at an hour long each, I’m not sure why anyone but an American history student with a looming exam would press on much further.
The American Revolution is nominally interesting, at least in that is it consequential – it shaped the modern Western world. Yet Franklin begins in France, thousands of miles from the action. We meet Benjamin (Michael Douglas) and his grandson Temple (Noah Jupe) as they arrive in Passy to coo-ing crowds – clearly, Franklin Senior is beloved in these parts, but as he begins talking, the reasons for his popularity are less evident.
Speaking in a neverending stream of aphorisms, for which the real Benjamin Franklin was famous, this version of the founding father makes for pretty tedious company – although if Douglas’s pointed twinkling is anything to go by, we’re supposed to find him hilarious. Invited to dinner at an aristocrat’s house, Franklin quips of his host’s dashing son that “One has the oddest desire to punch him in the nose” – all I can say is, I know the feeling.
Generally, we animate stories set hundreds of years ago by leaning on eternally relevant human concerns – from sex and violence all the way through to more profound themes like the meaning of life. Franklin draws a blank at both ends of the spectrum; I was begging for someone to rip a bodice or brawl in a tavern, but the best we got was an as-yet-unconsummated emotional affair with Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (Ludivine Sagnier) and one paltry stabbing of an anonymous Le Havre docker. Instead, the characters move from one dinner party to another, as vague news about the war on the other side of the world trickles in slowly, to very little effect.
Seriously, nothing happens. Secret letters passed between characters are so secret that the audience isn’t let in on their contents – boy, what I wouldn’t have given for some dramatic irony. Someone smashes Franklin’s printing press, but then it gets fixed. Even when a character dies in one episode, he’s revealed to be alive in the next; it’s like the script is allergic to plot, doing anything it can to avoid events with any consequences.
Despite its extraordinary lack of narrative drive, Franklin has clearly had plenty of effort poured into it; that’s what makes its limpness such a shame.
The costumes are amazing, the actors are great even if their accents aren’t (and clearly no expense has been spared on historical consultants). But its flashes of interest – such as the Chevalier d’Éon, a real-life war hero who returned to court in 1777 and lived as a woman, who appears in the show’s third episode – are fascinating but inconsequential, falling away as quickly as they appear.
Perhaps what Franklin teaches us is that history does not necessarily equate to story. A list of events is not a plot; just because we all know his name, doesn’t mean Benjamin Franklin is interesting. These are important lessons, which Apple has learnt at great expense; luckily, you needn’t learn the same, the hard way.
‘Franklin’ is streaming on Apple TV+