Ric Burns' film is informative, but is dry, pedantic and humorless, and never captures the spirit of New York. As a lifelong New Yorker, I barely recognize the city Burns' describes (even the periods I've lived through).New York is a fast-paced, chaotic and funny place, but none of these qualities comes through in this pious, windy textbook of a film. The wit his brother Ken was able to capture in Baseball and Jazz is nowhere to be found. If locals and visitors were asked to pick New York's most prominent feature, one word you'd hear again and again is "energy". Paradoxically, Burns' attempt to portray the city has barely any.Watch this, if you must, for a bit of historical background, but there are any number of books, fiction and non-fiction, that will give you a better sense of New York.