Long before the History Channel, Biography, A & E, or Discovery, PBS proved itself pretty effective at doing documentaries. They still make them, and this six-hour DVD focusing on American Jews proves they can still pull out a decent documentary from their taxpayer supported rumps every once in a while.

Thanks in large part to its six-hour length, The Jewish Americans has a chance to really go in-depth in their study of this people and culture, unlike the other documentary I recently reviewed, NFL The Leaders: Breaking Racial Barriers In the NFL, which brushed over much of the depth of detail that one desires in a good documentary.

The Jewish Americans, however, gets its style down just right; the approach is Ken Burns-esque, mixing solid narration provided by Liv Schreiber with well-edited interviews with prominent American Jews of all ages, as well as old footage, newspaper clippings and other methods of presenting the historical information at hand, most notably through beautiful photography. But the emphasis here is on telling stories – real stories about real Jews and their experiences throughout their history in America.

One aspect that surprised me was how the documentary related the pre-World War I and World War II tensions between German Jews, who seemed eager to immigrate and blend into America other than inside their own homes, and the Eastern European Jews, who held on more tightly to their heritage and had a lesser desire to “blend in.”

While there are plenty of Jewish folks in entertainment, and actor Fyvush Finkel is interviewed throughout, the documentary, to its credit, does not focus overmuch on just the entertainment community Jews. Instead, the net is cast wider to encompass tales of Jewish folks who came to inhabit all levels of society, be they a family that ran a market in a frontier town, a mayor of some village, or even a tailor who would go on to spawn the Levi Strauss & Company brand of denim jeans.

The two-disc set is brief on extras, but with six hours of history-filled stories to explore, there’s plenty to like about this package even on the merits of its four episodes only. More than just a cursory treatment, The Jewish Americans is a significant and well-detailed coverage of the topic it tackles, and delivers some information that is sure to inform nearly every viewer of some new fact they didn’t know previously. Was the creator of billet grilles or the founder of Lehmann Brothers Jewish? This documentary is long enough to give you at least one of the answers to that question.

While I’m not exactly ready to make PBS-watching a regular habit in favor of History, Biography, A&E, or Discovery, any network that released a package like this would have a solid documentary to air. This one will stay on my video shelf for a long time to come.