The legendary documentarian has taken on his first non-American subject for an expansive two-part docuseries

One of the more reassuring aspects of the Donald Trump era has been the emergence of authors and historians as accidental therapists. When some new calamity erupts, there is Doris Kearns Goodwin, Rachel Maddow or Jon Meacham sitting at the national bedside with soothing words about how we’ve been here before and always got through it.

But when the Guardian calls Ken Burns, the quintessential American documentary film-maker who earlier this year delivered a commencement address that described Trump as “the opioid of all opioids”, he is surprisingly taciturn about how last week’s presidential election result affected him.