Saturday, 10 September 2016
490 Roots
First viewed : 31 May 1981
When Dallas finished for the summer ( with Mary Crosby floating upside down in the Southfork swimming pool ) BBC 1 replaced it with a back to back repeat run of the two series of Roots (originally shown in 1977 and 1979 ).
The Roots story was one of the cultural phenomena of the seventies. Journalist Alex Haley who made his name interviewing major public figures ( Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Johnny Carson ) for Playboy magazine. published his novel Roots : The Saga of an American Family which recounted the story of his family going right back to his Mandinka ancestor Kunta Kinte brought to America as a slave and ending with the author successfully pinpointing his origins in The Gambia. It became an instant bestseller and the original TV series broke records in the US. I didn't watch it first time round but was well aware of the hoo-ha around it , not least through the parody version in an episode of The Goodies.
It's since been established that Haley's story was largely a work of fiction, the product of plaigiarism, sloppy research, and wishful thinking, Nevertheless it made gripping drama as the family lived through the humiliations of slavery, the American Civil War, lynch mobs, Ku Klux Klan and more subtle discrimination. I missed the first three episodes this time round probably due to O Level revision but was hooked from the fourth episode on.
That meant I missed most of the story of Kunta himself as he and his daughter Kizzy ( Lesley Uggams ) were separated in that episode when she was sold to a new owner Tom Moore ( Chuck Connors ). The dramatic denouement of that episode was Moore's rape of Kizzy on her first night there , probably the most shocking moment of the entire series although there was an horrific lynching a few episodes on, orchestrated by the series chief villain Earl Crowther ( the reliable Paul Koslo ). His own eventual murder was one of the most satisfying come-uppances in TV history.
After Kunta , the most memorable of the black characters was his grandson Chicken George ( Ben Vereen ) who wins his freedom and improves the lot of his family by becoming expert at training cocks for fighting.
After the phenomenal success of the first series , the second one had a much higher budget and the likes of Henry Fonda , James Earl Jones and Marlon Brando dropping in to play cameo roles. It suffered a little through the events being not quite so traumatic as we moved into the twentieth century but it still held your interest.
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