‘Franklin’ Review: Michael Douglas’s Revolutionary Mission

“The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” appeared posthumously in 1791 and has “brought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin’s pernicious biography.” Or so said Mark Twain. Even today, the book makes its case for industry and self-improvement. And for Franklin being among the more insufferable gasbags of Colonial America.

You get more than a whiff of this in the eight-part “Franklin,” in which Michael Douglas portrays one of our most accomplished Founding Fathers, a printer, writer, moralist, political philosopher and scientist. “They think I invented electricity,” Franklin whispers mischievously to his 16-year-old grandson, Temple (Noah Jupe), as they are welcomed by a rapturous crowd of Parisians unaware that the wartime U.S. ambassador has come seeking their hard-earned francs for his Revolution. He has no intention of disabusing anyone about his kite-flying experiments. Or of sparing anyone his beseechments and bromides.

A good thing for the Franklin brand, aside from the hundred-dollar bill, is the fact that at no time is an audience unaware that Mr. Douglas is playing a role. He does impish; he does ruthless; few of us have a firm idea of who or what Franklin was, so the actor can do what he wants, and does. Based not on the autobiography but rather on author Stacy Schiff’s well-regarded “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America,” the series provides a kind of insider’s look at the messy diplomatic origins of the U.S., while never convincing anyone that what is being staged isn’t an elaborate dress-up, either in crinolines or, in Franklin’s case, the famously ratty fur hat that looks like it still needs to be fed. Franklin was apparently something of a sexual frontiersman, even at the age of  70 when he went off to Paris, but it is no more pleasant watching the 79-year-old Mr. Douglas leer after such relatively fresh young Frenchwomen as the married Madame Brillon (Ludivine Sagnier of “Lupin”) than it would have been watching the original Ben in action.

Dispatched at a time when the Revolution was not going well—the British have just taken New York—Franklin has brought along the callow Temple as an aide as well as a student: As he schools the boy, he also schools us viewers, in diplomacy, artful lying and realpolitik. There are those who come, almost reflexively, to his cause: The playwright and revolutionary Beaumarchais, for instance (Assaad Bouab), the author of “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro,” which would inspire a couple of fellows named Rossini and Mozart; and the Marquis de Lafayette (Théodore Pellerin), whom his pal Temple calls “Gilbert” and to whom Ben provides a letter of introduction that allows the young French nobleman and his money to join the American cause and nearly get himself killed.

At the risk of picking on Mr. Douglas, one of the flaws in his performance is vocal quality. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, either of the throat or the tongue; it has never been quite clear which. But whatever the cause is now, injury or age, he has lost the ability to use his voice as a dramatic instrument. He is playing an old man (Franklin lived to the unlikely 18th-century age of 84), but Mr. Douglas delivers his dialogue in such a croaking, quavering manner that it seems that what is at work is more a lack of control than a strategy and is, as a result, a distraction. At the same time, distractions may be welcome, given how glacially “Franklin” moves along its less-than-revolutionary path.

Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.