PBS Brings Back Ric Burns' 'New York' Documentary After 23 Years with Two New Episodes
PBS will debut two new episodes of Ric Burns' New York: A Documentary Film on September 21 and 22, marking the first instalment in the series since 2003.
The episodes — titled Shadows of the Past and The Future of Cities — are the ninth and 10th in a project that began airing in 1999 as part of PBS's American Experience strand. The previous episode, The Center of the World, aired on September 8, 2003 and focused on the World Trade Center, culminating in the events of 9/11 (The Hollywood Reporter).
The new chapters explore how New York City has changed in the 25 years since the September 11 attacks, and also trace the city's recovery from near-bankruptcy in the mid-1970s. Burns told The Hollywood Reporter he worked on the two episodes for more than a decade. The first interview he conducted for the project was with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, filmed in the final week of Bloomberg's administration in 2013 (The Hollywood Reporter).
The episodes feature interviews with four former New York mayors: David Dinkins, Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams. Burns directed both instalments and co-wrote them with James Sanders. Robert Sean Leonard narrates the new episodes, taking over the role from the late David Ogden Stiers, who narrated the earlier chapters of the series (The Hollywood Reporter).
The original New York: A Documentary Film ran as an eight-part, 17½-hour series covering the city's history from its earliest Dutch colonial days through the 20th century. Episode 1, The Country and the City, opened in 1609; Episode 4, The Power and the People, tracked the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898 (PBS).
A preview screening of The Future of Cities was held at Roosevelt House at Hunter College in May 2026, followed by a discussion with Burns. The Museum of the City of New York also hosted a preview of both new chapters with a panel featuring the series' creators (Roosevelt House, Hunter College; Museum of the City of New York).
For a documentary series that last aired an episode when the city was still clearing Ground Zero, the return carries a simple weight: a film that has spent a quarter-century chronicling New York is now turning its lens on everything that came after.
