Poor Robert E. Lee. All these years later he still can’t beat Ulysses S. Grant.

On Monday the PBS series “American Experience” offers its take on Lee, and the account is serviceable enough. But an earlier “American Experience” on Grant’s war years, scheduled for rebroadcast next Monday, is better.

There’s not much new to be learned about either of these men, of course, so the contest largely comes down to a matter of presentation. The Lee program favors lingering shots of fountain pens and drafting tools and, somewhat inexplicably, flowers in bloom, along with the usual still photographs of Lee, his family and his troops. The Grant program at least sprung for some live actors. Too much re-creation and your documentary becomes cheesy, but used lightly, as it is in the Grant program, the technique can keep works of this length — 90 minutes — from being numbing.

We must also face the probability, however, that Lee just wasn’t as interesting as Grant. “Robert E. Lee’s precise professionalism and orderly intellect made him what the military most needed in the 1830s and 1840s: a gifted civil engineer,” the narrator, Michael Murphy, says. With that setup, you know you’re not going to get the kind of fiery, soldier-slapping military leader who makes for exciting television.