Miniseries premiere Monday, May 30, 9/8c, History, A&E and Lifetime
@TVGMMattRoush
Ispent my 18th birthday in front of the TV—not (just) because I’m a TV nerd, but because it was the final night of Roots’ original run on ABC. Everyone I knew was watching, spellbound. No one had seen anything like it: a new form of epic TV wedded to the explosive topic of slavery and African-American heritage.
Kunta Kinte, Fiddler, Kizzy, Chicken George: Their tragedies and triumphs became part of a national conversation about race that’s still relevant. Just this month, in the season finale of WGN America’s runaway-slave drama Underground, its heroine declared, “If we don’t remember our stories, who will?”
In retelling Roots’ story (see page 24 for more), History no longer has novelty, or as captive…
