“America 1900”: Other than coping with a massive global computer failure, what are you planning for the last year of this century? In the last year of the last one, the nation was taking over the Philippines (and protesting the war), preparing to assassinate the president (William McKinley), moving toward women’s liberation, coping with rampant new technologies such as indoor plumbing and, with buoyant optimism, still partying like it was 1899. This three-hour examination of the significant year (8 p.m., WTTW-Ch. 11) kicks off the new season of “The American Experience,” the PBS history series that is one of television’s finest. And this wise and lively documentary, made by David Grubin (who made the series Truman, LBJ and both Roosevelt films), keeps the standard high. What is perhaps most striking about it is how many of the issues discussed have contemporary equivalents, suggesting that, for all the improvements in health and race and labor, we are who we have been.
