This is an incredibly entertaining and interesting documentary. It focuses on a series of ten television debates in the late 1960s, conceived by ABC's then-stunted news division because they could not cover the Democratic and Republican conventions as deeply as their competitors. The events pit conservative National Review editor William F. Buckley, Jr. against liberal novelist and screenwriter Gore Vidal as Richard Nixon ran for president, promising a renewed focus on law and order in an America beset by rioting and civil unrest. The film folds a great deal into its fleet, slim 90 or so minutes. It argues, for instance, those 48-year-old debates planted a troubling seed which then grew into today's ultra-partisan world of shouted punditry and identity politics. It is also fascinating simply to be submerged in Vidal and Buckley's respective worlds (now very much lost), a time of boxy cameras and even boxier televisions when two patrician, essay-writing public intellectuals with precious Mid-Atlantic accents could capture the public imagination with bitchy bon mots and words such as "hobgoblinization."

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