The 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 has brought with it a fresh round of major-milestone documentary programming. This includes a three-part National Geographic series focused on reunions between survivors and rescuers as well as a two-hour MLB Network effort exploring how baseball helped restore a sense of normalcy to the nation after the attacks. (Its title: When America Took the Field.)
Television drama began to address what came to be known as 9/11 while Ground Zero was still smoking. Aaron Sorkin wrote and filmed an episode of The West Wing just weeks later. It grappled with America’s response to terrorism, Islamophobia and nascent civil liberty incursions. Shows about the NYPD, FDNY, FBI and CIA — including Law & Order, Sleeper Cell, Rescue Me, 24, Homeland and The Looming Tower — engaged with what had happened that day as well as the long aftermath.
Meanwhile, studio film projects were pulled and postponed. Exhibits A and B: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Warner Bros. action thriller Collateral Damage had featured a terrorist skyscraper bombing and Tim Allen’s Disney comedy Big Trouble involved a smuggled bomb on an airplane. In time, though, national exhibitors saw the release of a group of movies which have helped to shape the country’s understanding of one of the hinge moments in American history.
