Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood but some historical inaccuracies: no Douglass, John Brown, or fiddlers
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2017
While this series does an excellent job of showing the horrors of slavery,
the desperate effoirts it took to escape it, and the courage of the
Underground workers, it has one serious flaw - almost all the characters, Black or
White, are looking out only for number one, almost all act on selfish motivations.
But there were Black leaders back then who had the same type of personality
as an Ellington or a Coltrane - strong smart leaders, but with a real concern for others.
I have seen only Season I, and Wikipedia tells me that Harriet Tubman appears in
Season 2, but there were other decent, even noble leaders on the King-Ellington model:
it would have been nice - and more historically accurate - to have at least one character like that here.
Similarly, the only preachers shown (in the first season at least) are hypocrites or fools.
Yet religion played a big role in the Underground: it was a motivator for many escaping slaves,
and the vast majority of the White 'conductors' were Evangelicals or Quakers: check out
John Brown, for instance: a Bible in one hand, a rifle in the other.
Another problem I had was with the music: instead of using music of the time,
all dance scenes are accompanied by modern (21st century) pop styles. Most
Southern plantations at the time used slave orchestras, and the Black fiddler was
a major figure in the creation of jazz and that could have been shown here, instead of
the truly vapid pop selections which destroy the historical ambiance for that mioment.
Still, this series does show the true horrors of slavery, more so even than Roots,
and deserves credit and watching for that.