Series synopsis
The Sixties is an American documentary television series that premiered on CNN on May 29, 2014. It ended on August 7, 2014. It stars Tom Hanks, David Brinkley, Dan Rather and Shirley Chisholm.
The space race, the cold war, "free love," civil rights and more: The decade of the 1960s shaped our history -- and changed the world. In collaboration with Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, CNN explores perhaps the most transformative decade of the modern era in a 10-part documentary series and brings new insights into how those events shaped today.
Premise
The space race, the cold war, "free love," civil rights and more: The decade of the 1960s shaped our history -- and changed the world. In collaboration with Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, CNN explores perhaps the most transformative decade of the modern era in a 10-part documentary series and brings new insights into how those events shaped today.
Premise: The decade that changed the world.
Cast and characters
Leading cast
- Tom Hanks as Self
- David Brinkley as Self (archive footage)
- Dan Rather as Self (archive footage)
- Shirley Chisholm as Self (archive footage)
Guest cast
- Walter Cronkite as Self (archive footage)
- Neil Sheehan as Self
- Tim O'Brien as Self
- John F. Kennedy as Self (archive footage)
- Jack Ruby as Self (archive footage)
- Ngô Đình Diệm as Self - President of South Vietnam (archive footage)
- Strom Thurmond as Self (archive footage)
- Marlon Brando as Self - Civil Rights Activist (archive footage)
- Sammy Davis Jr. as Self (archive footage)
- Merriman Smith as Self - UPI (archive footage)
- Richard Reeves as Self
Episodes
This series spans 1 season with 10 episodes.
| Season | Episodes | First aired | Last aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 10 | May 29, 2014 | August 7, 2014 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Television Comes of Age (1960 - 1969) Americans gathered around “the tube,” to be informed and entertained by the news, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, I Dream of Jeannie, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and more. Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Dick and Tom Smothers, Carol Burnett, Dick Cavett, Diahann Carroll, Carl Reiner, Vince Gilligan, Petula Clark and others describe how the ground-breaking, rule-breaking, norm-bending dramas, historical events, and sitcoms reflected and influenced who we were. |
May 29, 2014 |
| 2 |
The World on the Brink (1960 – 1963) The heady days of Camelot were clouded by the political and military tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Marvin Kalb, Richard Reeves, Robert Dallek, Sergei Khrushchev and more explain how close the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought us all to World War III – and how two nuclear superpowers moved from near confrontation to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. |
June 5, 2014 |
| 3 |
The Assassination of Kennedy (1963 - 1969) A documentary examining the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. Included: a look at the conclusions drawn from the Warren Report; and eyewitness testimony. Remarks by: historians Robert Dallek and Robert Caro; journalists Robert MacNeil and Dan Rather; and Alexandra Zapruder, whose grandfather captured the assassination on film. |
June 12, 2014 |
Production
Release
| Original network/platform | CNN |
|---|---|
| First aired | May 29, 2014 |
| Last aired | August 7, 2014 |
| Runtime | 60 minutes |
| Status | ended |
| Schedule | Thursday at 21:00:00 |