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...