New series looks at 10 pivotal U.S. events

NEW YORK, April 11 (UPI) -- The producer of The History Channel's "10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America" says the series tries to spotlight important events that are not often cited.

Airing this week, the 5-part series includes new, 1-hour-long documentaries on topics like the battle at Antietam, Shays' Rebellion, the Homestead Strike and the Scopes evolution trial.

"The idea was to do 10 hours with 10 independent filmmakers and each of them would do a piece of American history," the series' executive producer, Susan Werbe, told UPI in a recent phone interview.

Explaining how she wanted to avoid such well-covered material as the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the battle of Gettysburg and the attack on Pearl Harbor, Werbe said: "What we didn't want to do, it became increasingly clear, is things that either we have done a lot of before or those that are wonderful, intellectual ideas, like Plessy vs. Ferguson, but difficult to make (into) a really engaging, entertaining and informative hour of television."

Filmmakers got a list of 30 "less-obvious" events and were asked to pick their favorite three, out of which they were assigned one topic to explore in their film.

Actors Hector Elizondo, Campbell Scott, Martin Sheen and Jeffrey Wright narrate the documentaries.