1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything - Season 1

Weaves an aural and visual tapestry of a time no less chaotic, convulsive, and uncertain than our own.

This eight-part series gets off to a fascinating start... Well worth checking out.

1971 wants to be both Ken Burns and VH1's Behind the Music. It could have been a great version of either one, but it's too thin to be both. Still, it hits the spot when it gets there.

It's an eye-opening, mind-bending journey for anyone of any age to digest.

We often see the lyrics of songs superimposed onto still photos and archival footage of the time...it's a powerful technique, merging the music with the movements.

... a brilliant stringing together of music and images and stories from a year when the idyllic innocence of the 1960s met the harsh realities of war and violence and injustice.

Part history lesson, part celebration of some truly iconic sounds.

1971 feels immediate, exciting, confused, current - and it also feels like the stresses that impact culture today are the same ones that fuelled the tug-of-war between the establishment and counter-cultures of America and Britain 50 years earlier.

Finely-balanced critical context ... kept me watching with pleasure and keenly renewed interest.

For me, the mark of a great film is one that leaves you craving more. And "1971" is such an entity, a relevant history lesson presented with a burst of nostalgia and enlightenment.

Here's one of the most all-encompassing and stunning music documentary experiences that I've ever seen. Allow the information to take hold and process, and you'll feel your own creativity and interests blossom.

Every time I found myself wondering if 1971 was just the latest example of a megacorporation trying to sell boomers their own history in a shiny new package, it delivers a moment like David Bowie's unpolished, exquisite performance of Changes...