This is another documentary series, produced by National Geographic, that appears near the top of an alphabetical list of shows currently on on Disney Plus. It's not a 'warts and all' look at the decade, but rather a rundown of various aspects of the year, with a positive spin to them.
Though the 1980's began with America suffering a recession, the proliferation of credit cards, along with the policies of President Ronald Reagan fuel a spending spree and a boom time. Branding comes into its own and consumerism drives people to buy specific, high-prestige items. Japan begins to import high quality reasonably priced electrical goods. By the end of the decade, the cold war ends with the symbolic destruction of the Berlin Wall.
Divided up into ten episodes, each one barely more than 20 minutes, the series tries to group together various aspects of the decade together and focus on two or three stories per episode. Huey Morgan is the narrator and he does a good job undercutting the funnier moments and making the odd postmodern comment on similarities with the decades to come. Whilst the show does focus on positive moments from the decade, some less positive aspects, such as the "Greed is good" idea and yuppies/bankers, and how that led to the Wall Street Crash are too important to the decade to be ignored.
If I'm honest, it quickly became background noise whilst I looked at my phone or did something else and the episodic nature of the show meant that I could drop focus on a section and come back when that was over. There is another 80's based series that is up next, it'll be interesting to see whether that goes more in depth on these same subjects.
