"Roots" (1977) More at IMDbPro »TV mini-series

Roots is great television: entertaining, gripping at times, and both brave and sweeping in the time and the characters that it spans. But does it summarise or encapsulate the misery and experience of 200+ years of slavery, bondage, rape and torture? I think not. And you can attribute that to the time of its production and airing, and the staid and conservative white-dominated market it hoped to win over - it was produced as entertainment first and history second, and a lot of concessions were made to the former. If you want a truer, more profound picture of just how bad slavery was, read Haley's book, one of the many other excellent histories, or fictional works like Fred D'Aguiar's "The Longest Memory". Watch Roots by all means, but consider the perspective and the audience, and the consequently euphemistic representation of what it was like to be a slave.

That said, it was ground-breaking in that it put the historical blight of American slavery into the public domain, and made it a talking point. And while the horrific aspects of it are often sanitized, they are never evaded: kidnapping, torturous sea voyages, humiliating auctions, brutal indoctrinations and 'taming', the harsh punishment of runaways, the back-breaking work, the condescending treatment, whippings, beatings, rape and mental torment - they're all represented across the broad vista of the narrative. Given the enormous scope of the programme it's not surprising that the series lurches into stereotype and simplistic characterisation from time to time, but it's not overly detrimental to its appeal.

My main issue with Roots is it suggests that despite the constant and intense maltreatment of slaves, they retained some fundamental dignity and self-respect. There are few, if any, black characters in Roots who become utterly compliant and subservient: most retain some level of self-esteem and defiance, even if they have to express it behind closed doors. History suggests different, that it was utterly psychologically degrading, that defiance and self-worth were quite limited by the institutions and processes of chattel slavery. In Roots the whites are seen as menacing intrusions into the lives of fairly happy and content working folk - there is little sense of the omnipresence that whites had, or the fear that they both cultivated and wielded.