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Sailing across the Atlantic to France in October 1776, Benjamin Franklin had 38 days to contemplate his near-impossible mission: persuading the absolute French monarchy of Louis XVI to bankroll a nascent American republic.<\/p>\n
His democracy in the making had just declared independence from another monarchy, the British, and had done so with \u201cno gunpowder, no engineers, ships, munitions, money and no army fit to fight a war,\u201d said Stacy Schiff, the author of the 2005 book \u201cA Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Communication with the revolutionary colonies was erratic and his authority in France tenuous, but Franklin had one significant card up his sleeve: The French hatred of the British, fortified by recurrent war. Franklin, oozing charm at 70, deploying creative ambiguity, leavening wisdom with humor, aware of French fascination with this strange new creature called an \u201cAmerican,\u201d had the guile \u2014 as well as the ironclad patriotic conviction \u2014 to exploit this diplomatic opportunity.<\/p>\n
This is the backdrop to a new eight-part Apple TV+ series, \u201cFranklin,\u201d that began airing this month. Based on Schiff\u2019s book and filmed in France, it stars Michael Douglas, in his first period picture, as the most worldly of America\u2019s founders<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The series has premiered as another war-torn young democracy<\/a>, Ukraine, scrambles for arms and funds to defend its freedom, and as the American democracy whose fragility Franklin always feared confronts the January 2021 storming of the Capitol<\/a> by a mob intent on overturning an election. This timing gives the drama a powerful added resonance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To prepare for the role, Douglas said he \u201clooked long and hard at the $100 bill,\u201d but the actor chose not to strive for exact likeness of belly, chin and hairline. Instead Douglas, best known for his roles in \u201cFatal Attraction<\/a>\u201d and \u201cWall Street<\/a>\u201d and now 79, deploys an unhurried delivery filled with the wisdom of a lifetime and a twinkly gaze at once detached and penetrating to dissolve uncannily into the philosopher-statesman of America\u2019s founding.<\/p>\n Suffering from excruciating gout, old enough to be James Madison\u2019s or Alexander Hamilton\u2019s grandfather, comfortable in a little fur hat from Canada, Douglas\u2019s Franklin captures the birth of an enduring American impatience with honorifics and formality. Wigs and the Royal Court do not sway him, even if he has a taste, and talent, for the French bon mot. <\/em>He is both flirtatious and avuncular.<\/p>\n