Constitution USA with Peter Sagal

It’s an educational, entertaining, warts-and-all look at something that deserves our better understanding.

Peter Sagal begins Constitution USA, his four-part exploration of the founding American document, with look-at-me gimmicks that are more annoying than enlightening, but the series grows more substantive as it goes along.

For anyone engaged in this discussion, merely capturing how the Constitution remains relevant can’t help but feel a trifle wishy-washy and simplistic.

You can see Sagal and his premise coming from many miles away, making precisely the irritating jokes and wry asides you’d expect him to make. The effect--educational or otherwise--rests somewhere in a parched canyon between “Schoolhouse Rock” and a “Daily Show” segment.