As of July 2026, Frontline Season 6 aired in 1987 with 24 episodes — streaming now on PBS. Full episode guide and where to watch below.

Frontline Season 6 poster

← Back to Frontline

Frontline Season 6

1987 24 Episodes Documentary · News ⭐ 7/10

Frontline Season 6 has built a real following on and among viewers who want documentaries that actually inform. The 1-season run is exactly the right length for what it is doing. With 57 viewer ratings on TMDB, this is not a title flying under the radar. Rigorous in a way documentary storytelling does not always commit to. Put it on tonight and see for yourself.

Part of the current wave of titles people are actually watching, Frontline Season 6 earns its spot. The access Frontline Season 6 gets is remarkable — and the storytelling does full justice to it. Season 6 of Frontline includes 24 episodes. It aired from December 1987 to October 1988. This season stars Will Lyman. Will Lyman leads a cast that brings real weight to the material. It was aired in 1987. The restraint in Frontline Season 6 is what makes it trustworthy — it does not need to editorialise to make its point. It delivers reliably on what it promises, which is more than most of its competition manages.

Documentary fans who value serious storytelling will find Frontline Season 6 essential viewing. It does not lean on comparisons to make its case. Short enough to finish in a weekend, substantial enough to feel satisfying. Will Lyman's involvement signals a level of access and cooperation that is hard to secure. The kind of documentary that makes you feel informed rather than manipulated.

📡 Where to Watch Frontline Season 6

🇺🇸 United States

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

PBS America Amazon Channel

🎬 Frontline Season 6 — Episode Guide

Apartheid Part I: 1652-1948

Many white South Africans claim that the entire country is theirs by right. No black man, they say, occupied South Africa before the first tiny Dutch settlement in 1652. Part 1 refutes this claim and traces the country’s colonial history, the emergence early in the 20th century of the African Nation...

Apartheid Part 2: 1948-1963

Part 2 details the new policy which included classifying all South Africans by race, removing blacks from cities where many had lived for generations, and establishing separate and unequal schooling for blacks. Frontline focuses on the increasing black resistance in the 1950s and the rise of resista...

Apartheid Part 3: 1963-1977

Independent homelands' for blacks was the centerpiece of Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd's vision of apartheid. Part 3 focuses on how the white government found African leaders to collaborate with them in a plan to make foreigners of black South African citizens by deporting them to independent hom...

Apartheid Part 4: 1978-1986

When PW Botha became prime minister of South Africa two years after the Soweto uprising in 1976, he realized that apartheid must ‘adapt or die.’ Part 4 explores the reforms undertaken by Botha to maintain white supremacy, changes that have deeply divided Afrikaners and have provoked explosive reacti...

Apartheid Part 5: 1987

Part 5 looks at an unprecedented meeting in the struggle for South Africa’s future. Two years before the release of Nelson Mandela, dissident white Afrikaners met with black leaders from the outlawed African National Congress in Dakar, Senagal, to discuss strategies for change in South Africa, presa...

Praise the Lord

Frontline traces the rise and fall of television evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker and investigates why government agencies failed to vigorously investigate charges of corruption in the Bakker empire.

Operation Urgent Fury

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh investigates one of Ronald Reagan’s greatest truimphs-the rescue of American students during the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Hersh’s reporting reveals an inept US military operation and questions whether the students needed rescuing at all.

The Man Who Shot John Lennon

Frontline goes inside the mind of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980. Newly acquired records paint the chilling portrait of a celebrity stalker who meticulously planned the murder, believing it would make him famous.

Your Flight is Cancelled

Since deregulation, America's airline industry has become a nightmare of delays, cancellations, and near misses. This film probes the air traffic dilemma inside America's busiest airport -- in the control tower and behind the ticket counter.

Shakedown in Santa Fe

Eight years after one of the most violent prison uprisings in US history, Frontline returns to the penitentiary in New Mexico to probe the contininuing struggle between the inmates and the guards, the wardens and the reformers, for control of one of our most dangerous prisons.

Let My Daughter Die

Joe and Joyce Cruzan want doctors to remove their severely brain damaged daughter from the life-support system that keeps her alive. Nearly two years before it became the US Supreme Court’s first right-to-die case, Frontline explored the complex legal and moral issues of this Missouri couple’s battl...

Back in the USSR

In 1968, American journalist Jerry Schecter, accompanied by his wife and five young children, moved to Moscow on assignment for Time magazine. In 1987, Frontline returned with the Schecter family to the Soviet Union as they renewed old friendships and explored Russia under glasnost.

Poison and the Pentagon

The military is America’s largest producer of toxic waste. Frontline reporter Joe Rosenbloom investigates the Pentagon’s poor record of cleaning up its pollution that contaminates the ground water in communities across the country.

To a Safer Place

When Shirley Turcotte was a child, she was sexually abused by her father. After years of therapy she takes a remarkable journey back into her past-confronting her mother and other adults who failed to protect her, reuniting with her brothers and sister who were also brutally abused, and trying to ma...

Murder on the Rio San Juan

Frontline investigates the unsolved 1984 terrorist bombing at a press conference held by contra leader Eden Pastora. Eight people, including an American reporter, died that night on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This report dissects the motives of possible conspirators and follows the...

American Game, Japanese Rules

Can America succeed in Japan? Frontline paints an intimate portrait of Americans living and working in Japan-baseball players, businessmen, and an American bride-all confronting a society that looks Western, but operates by a very different set of rules.

Frontline explores the disturbing increase in racial incidents and violence on America’s college campuses. The attitudes of black and white students reveal increasing tensions at some of the country’s best universities where years after the civil rights struggle, full integration is still only a dre...

Guns, Drugs, and the CIA

An accountant for the Medellin drug cartel explains how he was asked by the CIA to provide funding to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

The Defense of Europe

Frontline examines in-depth the background, character, qualifications, and beliefs of the Republican and Democratic candidates, George Bush and Michael Dukakis.

🎭 Cast of Frontline Season 6

Will Lyman

Self - Narrator (voice)

📋 All Seasons of Frontline

Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 Season 7 Season 8 Season 9

Never Lose Track of Frontline

TV Butler Pro lets you search every streaming service in seconds, tracks what you've watched, and works completely free. No app download needed.

🎩 Try TV Butler Pro Free