Television: A Quick 1,000

CNN's Millennium series serves up whirled history

You wouldn't have thought it, but in his 1998 documentary Cold War, Sir Jeremy Isaacs had it easy. In that show, he could impress the viewer with bombshells (real ones); in Millennium (CNN, Sundays through Dec. 12, 10 p.m. E.T.), he has to astonish us with what we already know. This 10-hour, chronological series doesn't always succeed, but at its best, its hyper welter of history renders the familiar surprising.

Millennium hopscotches the world in vignettes, making regions characters in a global mini-series (and paying ample attention to non-Western areas). It eschews Ken Burnsian still lifes for a tarantella of computer...

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