Sidney is an entirely conventional but handsome Apple TV+ documentary about actor-director Sidney Poitier, directed by Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang, Marshall) and produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions. It’s inevitably loaded with Winfrey’s interview commentary and film footage, as well as her worshipful attitude toward Poitier, whom she called “the great black hope for me.” She tells the story of Poitier attending her forty-second birthday party, for example, and taking her aside to counsel her about how to handle criticism from fellow black people for being too “white-friendly.” The self-serving way Winfrey aligns her own narrative of achievement and suffering with his is uncomfortable because Poitier’s life story is what she’s celebrating as a kind of profile in courage. And whatever Winfrey’s accomplishments, she wasn’t trying to forge a film career back in the 1950s, when a black person playing anything but a servant role on-screen was still groundbreaking.

Much of Poitier’s life and career is well known, especially since his death in January 2022, which led to an outpouring of lengthy tributes to his many trailblazing achievements. He’d also written several autobiographies, 1980’s This Life, 2000’s The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, and 2008’s Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter — the second one named an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2007. Poitier also recorded interviews with Winfrey in 2012 that are included in the documentary, another indication that he intended to have a thorough say about his own life. But even if you know a lot about him in broad strokes, some of the details of his life, especially his early years, are eye opening.