Anyone watching this series about the Underground Railroad? It’s not too bad. Of course it deals with the US’s original sin, race-based chattel slavery and the resistance to it, so its appeal may be limited.
Edit: I’ll admit that some of the soundtrack choices (modern pop song snippets) are strange in a period piece. Not a real fan of that choice.
Decent cast, BTW, including the guy who played Limehouse on Justified, Reed Diamond (recently of Wayward Pines), Aldis Hodge (who plays the main male slave character and I recognize from a lot of roles), Christopher Meloni of one of the Law and Order shows, etc.
This series just premiered last night, so I expect that there will be some lag before it makes it to streaming (unless WGN is doing so from its site).
I believe you’re right that this is the first series treatment since Roots (which has been remade BTW and will premiere soon).
It was available on WGN’s website. I watched the first 20 minutes (I got interrupted for the Republican debate), and I really like it so far. I love the modern music, the high energy camera movements. I don’t like how many characters they are trying to introduce in this first episode though. I wish more shows would take the approach taken by Lost: instead of trying to introduce everyone in one episode, try to concentrate on just one or two people at a time, it’s not necessary to try to introduce everyone’s background in the first episode.
Another good episode tonight. It’s fascinating and inspiring that the people involved risked legal sanctions (for the white people involved), maiming and death (for the escaped slaves) to make the truly desperate journey to freedom.
One down side: the show is sponsored in part by Koch Industries. Makes me feel good skipping their ads at least.
So is no one else but Rock8man watching? It’s pretty good. And even though the action takes place over 150 years ago, you can see how the race and class dynamics of the period have led to some of the major forces behind the politics of the last 50 years.
Edit: one scene in tonight’s episode that reminded me of something I miss from my brief time living in the Midwest (Terre Haute, Indiana) as a kid: fireflies.
We’ve got this sitting on the DVR but I’ve been holding off to see what the concensus is. You’d be amazed how much of a TV backlog you come home to after 2 weeks out of the country.
We’ve been watching. It’s decent, with a mixed bag of acting which is often very good, but occasionally really bad depending on who is in the scene. I do like that it floats between the storylines of the plantation (owned by one brother) and the abolitionist couple (the other brother) setting the stage for the two storylines to obviously converge later in the series. The slave catcher is an interesting plot thread as well and they’re doing a nice job of leaving the door open for his story to go either way.
I’m not a huge fan of the mixing of the setting with the modern music. Sometimes it’s fine, but in other scenes it’s just been a jarring effect that takes away from some of the atmosphere. Thankfully it’s kept to a minimum, they’re not breaking out into a Jay-Z jam every 5 minutes or anything.
Man, tonight’s episode had some hard to take stuff*, like the poor little kid being suddenly thrust into field work.
All the US-based stuff aside, this show reminds me that there are millions around the world who are still slaves–from sex-trafficked women and children to people working in shrimp processing in Thailand.
EDIT: *Ugh, not to mention the phrenology/lobotomy stuff. It’s a wonder the human race has survived to this point.
And the second season is now two episodes in (though I’ve only watched half of the first episode). Haven’t seen Christopher Meloni (as the slave catcher) in it so far.
Wow, I forgot all about this show. Going to the WGN website just isn’t a habit, you know? I’ll have to find the show again on a streaming service. Looks like the first season is now on Hulu, so I can catch up that way.
Now if Comcast would only provide TiVo with reliable scheduling information: I thought I’d recorded the second episode, but it turned out to be a Person of Interest repeat.
Well, Comcast got its stuff sorted out, and now I’m wondering (feel free to answer anyone who knows) how the stonemason guy suddenly lost his sight? I’ve watched every episode this season and I know he didn’t start out blind.
