PBS offers up four hours of ‘City Hall’
If people still went to the office, this would be the time they would extend their Christmas vacation by a day or two. One gets the sense that CBS has already closed up shop. Why else broadcast “The Price Is Right at Night” (8 p.m., TV-PG) or “Let’s Make a Deal Primetime” (9 p.m., TV-PG)? Deck the (Monty) Halls with boughs of holly.
In contrast, PBS uses the slow holiday countdown to broadcast one of its most ambitious projects. Or at least the longest.
Director Frederick Wiseman’s 45th film, “City Hall” (8 p.m., TV-PG, check local listings), looks at the inner workings of Boston’s City Hall. This is not a political expose, but a celebration of civic life at its most basic and essential. It celebrates the people, the managers, clerks and committees who serve the public, providing sanitation work, veterans affairs, elder support, parks, licensing bureaus, record-keeping, you name it.
Wiseman has made a career with long takes on public servants and the inner workings of legendary institutions. He’s made movies about the Idaho Legislature (“State Legislature,” 2007); the peculiarities of New England life (“Belfast, Maine,” 1999), the bustling diversity of a New York City neighborhood (“In Jackson Heights,” 2015), the office politics behind the Dallas headquarters of Neiman-Marcus (“The Store,” 1983) and many others.
Wiseman has been making his fly-on-the-wall documentaries for more than a half-century. His 1968 film “High School” explored students, cliques and class at a Philadelphia school. His 1967 documentary “Titicut Follies” exposed life and conditions at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts. While the film received international acclaim, it was banned for years in this country over concerns that patients’ privacy rights had been exploited.
Wiseman’s films are not for everyone and are difficult to watch in one sitting. “City Hall” runs nearly four hours. In “The Store” we’re allowed to eavesdrop on committee meetings, sales calls and Christmas parties. In his 2014 epic “National Gallery,” about London’s esteemed museum, we see the inner workings of a cultural institution right down to the buffing of the floors and the repainting of walls. To call his film immersive is an understatement.
Many of Wiseman’s documentaries are available via Kanopy, the streaming service provided by many library systems. Among the films found there is “Ex Libris,” his 2017 celebration of the New York Public Library.
An explorer of institutions at the heart of our public lives, Wiseman has become a kind of institution himself. A recent profile in The New York Times ponders his 50-plus years of detail-heavy storytelling and wonders if he hasn’t transcended the film genre entirely. The piece was headlined, “What If the Great American Novelist Doesn’t Write Novels?”
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› Chairs swivel under mistletoe as coaches past and present belt out carols and seasonal favorites on “The Voice Holiday Celebration” (8 p.m., NBC, repeat, TV-PG).
› Tayshia reveals her choice on the season finale of “The Bachelorette” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
› The truth sets “Swamp Thing” (8 p.m., CW, TV-14) free in time for the season finale.
› A foster child is invited to spend the holidays with a biological family she never knew existed in the 2020 holiday drama “First Christmas” (9 p.m., OWN, TV-PG).