Roots is coming back...YAY!

[salsmum]

Just that really, Quite right it was amazing let's hope it still is.

I too watched the original series of Roots and don't usually watch period dramas but my 'excitement' was because I was looking forward to seeing the remake and for once having a programme on with a powerful cast and a story line more memorable than any school history book. It's about time that the BBC put some programmes on to warrant the increase in licence fee. Although in parts I suspect the story line has been changed and/or dramatised for the screen I think it has tried to stay fairly close to the original story line.

just started watchign this new series.
ok so far.

Finished watching it. Find it incredible to believe I watched it as a 7 year old, there is no way I'd let my DDs watch it yet because it is so distressing. I guess the special effects are so much better these days so the deaths were much more graphic (I'm particularly thinking about Noah's death and the duel that Tom Lea fought) than they were in the 970s. But it was probably the most influential TV show I watched as a child and the scene at the end of the first episode when Kunta Kinte has his foot cut off shocked me for a long time. I grew up in rural Scotland so didn't know anyone who wasn't white at that age so in a lot of ways that made it very important as well.

I know there are lots of historical inaccuracies in the book but I did wonder about Chicken George going to England for 20 years and returning on the eve of the American Civil War. That means he went to England as a slave in the 1940s, several years after the abolition of slavery in the UK and yet as a slave who could read he stayed in servitude there for another 20 years?

Thought the comparison with how Kunta Kinte was treated during the Revolutionary War by the English and how Chicken George was treated during the Civil War was interesting. Neither were allowed a gun so not much had changed even among the people who said they were against slavery.

Are they going to do the rest of the story up to the 1970s?

This story had a huge effect on me . I remember the original so clearly, the characters stayed in my memory until this day. So I was very interested to see what this generation would make of it . All in all a very good remake although I must confess that I was unable to watch the whipping scenes at all, had to fast forward, they upset me just as much this time as the first series. I had no idea about slavery back then so roots was my education on the subject. Powerful stuff and I don't see why it shouldn't be shown in schools to pupils aged 15 ish? My DS is 12 and Too young to deal with the violence it yet in my opinion.