Belfast, Maine, PBS, Feb. 4, 9 p.m. ET

By James Poniewozik

Before there were webcams, there was Frederick Wiseman. Like the Internet cameras that film cubicles and street intersections nonstop, Wiseman creates unblinking images--exhaustive, exhausting, narration-free cinema-verite documentaries. The 4-hr. 8-min. Belfast lingers over daily life in a small blue-collar town: marriages, doctors' exams, factories, a read-through of Death of a Salesman. While Wiseman's vignettes can be mesmeric, they're too often simply tedious and excessive. And it smacks of self-congratulation for the public-TV gentry to do these working-class commoners the mere favor of acknowledging--as the Salesman reference suggests--that attention must be paid.

--By James Poniewozik