‘The Underground Railroad’ review: Moving testament to the power of freedom
The Hindu
Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel is not an easy watch, but will persist in memory and is easily the best television of the year
After the battering handed out by Them and the virus, I was in no frame of mind to indulge in more vicarious viewing of the amount of punishment a body could take. Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railway, however, is a moving testament to the power of freedom. In an interview with this writer, Jenkins spoke of how the adapting the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was a matter of curation, of deciding what to keep, what to leave out and what to flesh out. Adapting a slim, 320-page novel into a 10-part series, makes one wonder about the wisdom of padding out a story that is effective in its minimalism. In the same interview, Jenkins talks of how the show is its own beast, and it most certainly is. The novel and the show are both set in the 19th century and tell of a slave Cora (Thuso Mbedu), who escapes from a plantation in Georgia with a fellow slave, Caesar (Aaron Pierre). The two uses the Underground Railroad, historically a system of safe houses to help runaway slaves.More Related News