Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution review – behold … the world’s messiest breakup!

The charming historian looks at how the UK-US ‘special relationship’ led to divorce – via Franklin’s naked ‘air baths’ and his wild portrait of George III that gave every visitor an electric shock

Whether history presenters should ever resort to gimmickry to keep viewers interested is a point for debate, but Lucy Worsley has a reputation for bringing the past to life without dumbing it down. Her trademark when she was making her name on BBC Four was delivering cogent facts while jovially wearing period costumes, to make sure history wasn’t homework.

There isn’t much of that hoopla in Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution. Worsley remains in her own wardrobe, leaving the donning of 18th-century robes and long, dusty wigs to the actors playing Benjamin Franklin and George III in the show’s brief, mercifully dialogue-free dramatic reconstructions. This two-parter isn’t an investigation, either – or at least it is only in the way any history documentary is, as Worsley goes through the normal light-factual procedures by visiting relevant locations in the UK and the US, finding in each an expert with a point to make and an artefact to illustrate it.

We philistines at home are given just one mild sweetener to extend our degraded attention spans: a tenuous theme. Worsley opens proceedings by striding past unaware lunch-breakers in a Manhattan park, brandishing a facsimile of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. “It’s the ultimate break-up letter!” she says. “It says America is breaking up with Britain. The relationship is over!”

Soon after that, Worsley observes that “the story of the American Revolution is usually told as if the outcome were inevitable”, but she is not referring to the perennial problem of history being written by the winners. Here, the rejection of British rule by its American colonies is an issue of miscommunication: partners who stopped listening to each other and ended up estranged when that could have been avoided. If this assertion never properly lands, it doesn’t spoil a narrative that’s outlined by the presenter with her customary verve.

And so, when Franklin is on manoeuvres in London in the 1760s, his effort to persuade parliament to devolve more decision-making to America is “like a marriage counsellor” encouraging each side of a dispute to understand the other’s feelings. Was it like that, though, more than any other ambassador or diplomat advocating for the folks back home?

It doesn’t matter much, since we’re entertained by reports of Franklin’s eccentricity, from his morning “air bath” – standing nude on the street-facing balcony of his London house – to his amusing electrified portrait of George III. Visitors chez Franklin were encouraged to utter seditious anti-monarchy sentiments then touch the picture’s metal crown, which had been rigged to administer a shock of uncertain magnitude.

Britain had run up war debts and couldn’t see why the American colonies shouldn’t be taxed to help bring the deficit down; the colonies were levying their own local taxes and didn’t understand why they should send money to London when they weren’t offered Westminster representation. After the 1765 Stamp Act was nullified by protests, Britain persisted, introducing new taxes – Worsley takes the opportunity to echo present-day controversies by using the term “tariffs” – on exports to the colonies of commodities including paper, glass and tea.

The furious reaction is personified by the work of radical British activist John Wilkes, whose pamphlet series The North Briton derided George III as a puppet of his ministers and supported the colonists’ cause. The 45th issue was particularly impactful: in a Manchester museum archive, Worsley examines some wonderful plates and teapots bearing Wilkes’s name and the legend “No 45”, bought and sold to advertise one’s political allegiance. “It’s a brilliant sort of social media campaign, isn’t it?” says Worsley, stretching for another modern comparison when her previous description of the crockery as “John Wilkes merch” seemed sufficient.

Anyway, the complacent, imperialist Britons soon made the problem worse by trying to stamp out discontent with violence. Worsley goes to the spot where the 1770 Boston massacre took place, before demonstrating how propaganda sheets on both sides of the Atlantic presented contradictory accounts of how and why British shots were first fired.

In 1773, Franklin wrote a satirical essay, commenting that Britain seemed intent on losing the colonies and offering sarcastic advice on how to go about it. One of his droll comparisons was to a husband who obsessively suspects his wife of adultery and causes that to become reality. Aha! Here is the source of Worsley’s divorce metaphor, which recurs as part one returns to its starting point. “It does read as if this is the end of a relationship!” she says, swiping on an iPad through an early Thomas Jefferson draft of the independence declaration. “It’s all about regret and roads not taken.” That’s still not an effective motif, but it’s easily forgiven on account of our shared history with the presenter: we’ll give it one more go next week.

• Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now