In the lead-up to the 1988 election, a group of journalists gathered at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to discuss how to cover presidential elections more effectively. While newspapers and network stations covered the race’s daily twists and turns, GBH’s FRONTLINE was positioned to offer something new: a long-form biography series. The Choice was born.

In every election since 1988, The Choice has dug deep into the lives of the two candidates. And since the 2000 election, producer/director/writer Michael Kirk has been at the helm for all but one.

Kirk and his team interview 40 people from various stages of each candidate’s life. He believes understanding the candidates from their earliest days is critical. “Do they have a bad family life? Do they have a fascinating family life? But also, how did they respond to trouble? What is the method they create for themselves to do everything that matters…Show me the person at (age) 7, and I’ll show you the President.”

Through his work as the original senior producer at FRONTLINE and now with his company Kirk Documentary Group, Kirk has produced more than 120 FRONTLINE documentaries on topics including the NFL concussion scandal, the Supreme Court, Russia’s incursions, and the Iraq War. In the first six months after 9/11, he helped create eight films on the events. Even with all that experience, The Choice 2024 introduced an unprecedented challenge.

As the team neared completion of their film, they were confronted with the withdrawal of President Joe Biden just 3½ months before election day. The extensive breaking news journalism skills of the FRONTLINE team were critical. They also benefited from the foresight of FRONTLINE Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath who, months before, had initiated a documentary about the vice presidential candidates. The extensive research into Vice President Kamala Harris for that film allowed Kirk and his team to complete a new version of the two-hour presidential documentary in 100 days, a process that usually takes five to six months. The hours of interviews that had already been completed about President Biden were reconfigured into a second film, FRONTLINE Biden’s Decision, airing just weeks after Biden’s withdrawal.

Redeveloping The Choice 2024 was far more complicated than just adding content about Vice President Harris. What makes these films truly successful is that links between the candidates’ stories are highlighted. With the change of candidates, these chronological connections could no longer be the historical touchstones that contemporaries like Presidents Biden and Trump share. When covering different generations, the threads need to be thematic, an approach Kirk used in the Obama/ McCain election. In addition to developing the new Harris content, the completed Trump components had to be reconfigured and reassessed. FRONTLINE’s decades of experience made this possible.

Kirk believes GBH’s long tradition of standing behind its productions is what makes every one of these films possible. “FRONTLINE is an institution which a lot of people call ‘Documentary Heaven.’ You don’t feel the pressure to back off. Your ideas and your hard-earned understanding of an issue or character are not second-guessed. It’s the envy of everybody I know who works in television.”

FRONTLINE/The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump
Tue (9/24) at 9pm on GBH 2 and the PBS app
Repeats:
Fri (9/27) at 8pm on GBH WORLD
Fri (9/27) at 9pm on GBH 44
Sun (9/29) at 8pm on GBH 44

FRONTLINE/The VP Choice: Vance vs. Walz
Tue (10/8) at 10pm on GBH 2 and the PBS app
Repeats:
Wed (10/9) at 9pm on GBH WORLD
Fri (10/11) at 9pm on GBH 44