The folks out at the History Channel sent over a chunk of American history that’s pretty much one of the biggest there is. It’s called Lee & Grant, and for Civil War buffs, there’s not going to be a whole lot bigger than that. But as it will turn out, these two titans of American military action will have a whole lot more going on than you might have expected.

Lee & Grant won’t be focusing so much on the Civil War as a whole, but rather on the two commanders of the Union and Confederate armies. Their early lives, their educations, their religious perspectives, and suchlike will be brought up, interspersed between each other. The differences between the two are surprisingly stark, and will be explored throughout the presentation.

They’re going to go into some truly incredible detail on this one, though you can pretty much expect that from most anything the History Channel brings out. It’s actually very surprising; as a regular reader of Harry Turtledove and a frequent student since the eighties, well, I think I’ve heard a lot about the Civil War, and there were plenty of things I never heard of here.

There are also a series of graphic sequences, displaying both maps and troop movements across said maps, showing you what was going on in the major battlefields of history. Plus, there’s even some truly top-notch narration by Jonathan Frakes, as well as a series of short commentaries by a variety of experts in the field.

Obviously, if you don’t have any interest in the Civil War, then most of this will be lost on you and you probably won’t have any interest in getting your hands on it any which way. But if you do have that interest, if you do follow the only civil war the United States has ever had (which is why the capital letters and the word “the” comes into play in conjunction with it so often), then you’re definitely going to enjoy this. As an educational tool, it will be impressive, and if high school history classes aren’t using this in some way then, frankly, I say they’re missing out. Still though, for most folks, Lee & Grant may not be sufficient enough to compel a watching.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Lee & Grant a seven out of ten–while it’s  a very niche product the History Channel has put on, and won’t be for everyone, those who do give this one a run will find a very orderly, very well put together piece of surprisingly watchable documentary-style television on DVD.