“It kept moving closer and closer.” “You never knew from day to day who was going to be next on the death list.” “People didn’t want to believe they could be healthy in the morning and dead by nightfall.”
Those are just the quotes that open the haunting “Influenza 1918” from PBS’s “The American Experience” documentary series, free to stream at the series’ website.
As the tight, taut hour rolls on, we learn of political choices that greatly increased the death toll. “The first reaction of the authorities, many of the most important ones, was flat out denial,” says the narrator, as the flu thought to have started in a Kansas military base’s burning manure pile died out briefly then returned to our shores in a rage from the trenches of World War I.
The film first aired in 1998, but the resonances with the current coronavirus pandemic are powerful and instructive. Ultimately, more than 600,000 Americans would die, more than in all the 20th Century’s wars combined.
As we watch the flu spread across the country, we hear of people becoming afraid to talk to each other, of quack “cures” and xenophobic disinformation spreading almost as fast as the disease. The charismatic preacher Billy Sunday told a gathering they could “pray down the epidemic — but even as he spoke, people in the audience collapsed from the flu,” says Ken Chowder’s elegant, precise script.
We see Philadelphia failing to socially distance. It decided to go ahead with a massive war bonds rally, and it became one of the hardest hit cities, with death carts roaming the streets like “a scene from the time of the Black Plague.”
We get enough science to understand the issue, then and now: “We cant get away from respiratory diseases of other people because we all have to breathe,” says a contemporary epidemiologist.
And we see, over and over again, the human toll of young, healthy people being taken suddenly. The novelist Katherine Anne Porter, then a cub reporter in Denver, almost died but survived; her handsome officer fiance did not, “and it seems to me that I died then,” she wrote.
The future New Yorker writer William Maxwell, as a boy in Lincoln, Ill., lost his mother, and “from that moment on there was a sadness,” Maxwell, who died in 2000, says in an interview. “Because I knew people aren’t safe and nobody’s safe. Terrible things could happen to anybody.”
“The orderly life of America began to break down,” the film says. “The vibrant and optimistic nation seemed to be falling apart.”
The parallels between then and now are not exact. People thought flu was caused by bacteria then, not viruses (which were too small to yet be seen), making a vaccine search a series of wrong turns. There was a global great war on, forcing large numbers of young men — this flu’s prime target, it seems — to be in breathing distance of one another. After a horrific October, the 1918 flu began petering out in November as the susceptible had fallen and survivors developed immunity, a course we cannot yet know if or when COVID-19 will take.
But there is so much here to make you think about not just social distancing but the need for social cohesion and about the significance of wise, active government. Beyond that, this is a wrenching human story delivering the message, too easily forgotten in easy times, that when it comes to epidemic disease none of us, really, is immune.
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
Additional Friday highlights from Tribune News Service
SERIES
The Blacklist
The drama returns two new back-to-back episodes. In the first the task force helps Red (James Spader) track a gifted art forger who has interfered with Red’s scheme to sell stolen art. Also, Liz and Ressler (Megan Boone, Diego Klattenhoff) share confidences, while Aram’s (Amir Arison) love life becomes increasingly complicated. In the second episode Joely Richardson guest stars as one of Red’s old flames. 7 p.m. NBC
Strike Back
In a new episode, Wyatt and Novin (Daniel MacPherson, Alin Sumarwata) have a reunion with Mac (Warren Brown) long after the dust has cleared from the incident in Munich. 9 p.m. Cinemax
Portals to Hell
A new episode takes hosts Katrina Weidman and Jack Osbourne to Lake George, N.Y., where the region’s breathtaking natural beauty contrasts with Fort William Henry, the site of one of the bloodiest massacres in Colonial America. 9 p.m. Travel
CORONAVIRUS ON TV
Coronavirus Update (N) 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. CW
Pandemic: What You Need to Know 11 a.m. ABC
Diario del coronavirus (N) 2 p.m. Univision
CoronaVirus Crisis: News Special (N) 6 p.m. Fox
Coronavirus Pandemic Coverage 9 p.m. Fox News Channel
TALK SHOWS
CBS This Morning (N) 6 a.m. CBS
Today (N) 6 a.m. NBC
Good Morning America Donnie Yen; Adam Lambert performs. (N) 6 a.m. ABC
Live With Kelly and Ryan Tyler Perry (“A Fall From Grace”); Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story”). (N) 8 a.m. ABC
The View Guest co-host Sara Haines; Howie Mandel; Mayor Francis Suarez (R-Miami). (N) 9 a.m. ABC
The Talk Andy Grammer performs; Brigitte Nielsen guest co-hosts. Noon CBS
Tamron Hall Drescher (“Indebted”); Ambyr Childers (“You”). Noon ABC
The Dr. Oz Show Wendy Williams discusses social distancing and suspending her talk show; answering questions about coronavirus. (N) Noon Fox
The Kelly Clarkson Show Eric McCormack; Liza Koshy; Mike Posner. 1 p.m. NBC
Dr. Phil Injuries, surgeries and pain pills destroyed a man’s athletic career; now he is a heroin addict. 2 p.m. CBS
The Ellen DeGeneres Show Chris Pratt (“Onward”); a firefighter and his wife return to give an update on his health. 2 p.m. NBC
The Real Tiffany Haddish (Self Made); Tiffany Boone (Hunters). (N) 2 p.m. Fox
Real Time With Bill Maher David Ropeik; Andrew Zimmern; Tim Miller; Edward Luce; Lis Smith. 9 p.m. HBO
The Issue Is: Elex Michaelson Dr. Paul Song; Harvey Levin; Psychologist Michael Gervais. (N) 9:30 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. Fox
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Will Ferrell. 10:35 p.m. CBS
Nightline (N) 10:35 p.m. ABC
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon BTS performs. (N) 11 p.m. NBC
Jimmy Kimmel Live! Ben Affleck (“The Way Back”); Justina Machado (“One Day at a Time”); Victoria Monét performs. 11:05 p.m. ABC
The Late Late Show With James Corden Lucy Hale; Scott Bakula; Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts with Justin Bieber; Wajatta performs. 11:37 p.m. CBS
Late Night With Seth Meyers Nicolle Wallace; Keke Palmer; Daymond John; Steve Ferrone performs. 12:03 p.m. NBC
A Little Late With Lilly Singh Wendi McLendon-Covey. 1:04 a.m. NBC
MOVIES
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Joanne Woodward, Henry Fonda and Jason Robards star in this 1966 Western comedy-drama in which an inexperienced woman (Woodward) must fill in for her stricken husband (Fonda) in a winner-take-all round of poker. 4 p.m. TCM
Widows
British director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) directed and co-wrote this 2018 British-American heist movie about four Chicago women who try to rob $5 million from a local politician to repay a crime boss from whom their late husbands stole before being killed in a failed getaway. Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall star. 6:50 p.m. Cinemax
Crawl
Director Alexandre Aja’s 2019 horror movie stars Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper as an aspiring college swimmer and her father, who are trapped in their home after a Category 5 hurricane floods their Florida community and a swarm of alligators who make their way inside the house. Ross Anderson, Anson Boon, Jose Palmer and Morfydd Clark co-star. 7 p.m. EPIX
DAYTIME MOVIES
Elysium (2013) 7 a.m. BBC America
Wedding Crashers (2005) 7 a.m. MTV; 3 p.m. MTV
The Aviator (2004) 7:50 a.m. Starz
Badlands (1973) 8:15 a.m. TCM
The Professional (1994) 8:30 a.m. AMC
Shrek (2001) 9 a.m. Nickelodeon
Urban Cowboy (1980) 9 a.m. Sundance
Little Women (1994) 9 a.m. TMC; 5 p.m. TMC
Fright Night (2011) 9:30 a.m. Syfy
The Honeymoon Killers (1969) 10 a.m. TCM
Panic Room (2002) 10:40 a.m. EPIX
Breathless (1959) Noon TCM
Hot Fuzz (2007) 12:15 p.m. Starz
Ferdinand (2017) 12:30 p.m. FXX
Mad Max (1979) 1:45 p.m. Showtime
X-Men: First Class (2011) 1:45 p.m. Syfy
The Getaway (1972) 1:45 p.m. TCM
Batman (1989) 2 p.m. AMC
The Horse Whisperer (1998) 2:05 p.m. TMC
8 Mile (2002) 2:11 p.m. Encore
The Descent (2005) 2:15 p.m. EPIX
Selena (1997) 3 p.m. E!; 8:30 p.m. E!
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) 3 p.m. FX
The Simpsons Movie (2007) 3 p.m. FXX
Wedding Crashers (2005) 3 p.m. MTV
Blazing Saddles (1974) 3:01 p.m. BBC America
Live Free or Die Hard (2007) 3:17 p.m. Starz
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 4:30 p.m. Syfy
Taken (2008) 5 p.m. AMC
Kung Fu Panda (2008) 5 p.m. Freeform
Little Women (1994) 5 p.m. TMC
Steel Magnolias (1989) 6 p.m. OVA
