More Roots

The final episode of Roots is on tonight. I’ve not really enjoyed visiting this blockbuster story/land mark event in television to be honest; you will learn that I am nothing but honest when I write about whats happening from my hill. I promise to be honest on every occasion, except the occasions I lie.

My boss, Ginger Pom tells me they all watched it glued to their tellies back in the day, but it wasn’t the quality of the production, or the glamour of the star studded yankee cast, sorry Mr McShane. Ginge swears it was the story, she says that in England in 1977, they just hadn’t heard a story like that before, and that’s what was fascinating for them. So I’m spoilt, I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it told by better story tellers, I’ve heard it told by more interesting characters. Oh dear, yawn is me, the too harsh critic – you’re too hard Ned, you are too hard on people. That song has rung around my ears with the familiarity of five bells.

I watched three David Lean movies last weekend........ I know I am spoilt.

It feels like a burden or a chore to have to sit through the last episode of Roots, its much the same feeling I get when I have to drag Ned’s Cavalier body to work each morning - I do like my current job, I just dont like working.

I remember the story of Roots being interesting, I think the thought of the story is interesting, the actuality is not. At the end, its still dated badly, the acting style is either wooden or cartoonish and the story is bland and has not held a lot of interest for me after all. The characters are not that entertaining or that compelling, I feel there is only one that has really engaged me and that was Chicken George (he is Kizzy’s son). The other black characters have fallen into two camps, the sour sullen moody ones or the hard done by beaten and down- trodden ones, Chicken George has an enthusiasm and energy the other characters are missing. Now London Hospital on UKTV whiched I watched after Roots last night has engaged me - fascinating, people die, children die, I like it when people die, its just like they do outside the box (outside the flat screen??) I dont have a flat screen tellie, so for mine its still outside the box.

I am forcing myself to continue with Roots, guilt wins out – 'black slavery stories, you should watch it just to show respect and empathy for what they went through' guilt, and I'm not even a damn yankee - I have leftie tendencies, and can singalong to the Internationale with vigour if nicely lubricated but who cant then, its oh so popular to be ‘pc’.

Guilt is my crime, suffering through boredom is my punishment, though as another slave gets whipped by some white sci fi character actor that you can never remember the name of, my mind wanders to thinking about what sort of a Doctor will Matt Smith make, or whether 4 hours of War of the Roses tomorrow will give me a numb bum - all the important issues of the day.

I am reading Dante, just the Inferno - I am experiencing a hiccup of intellectualism.

C W Stonekings Jungle Blues is this weeks sound track.

Recent Events - that man

The swearing in of the new US President is all over the news this morning, so many of the people of that country have put so many hopes into this US migrant, I am feeling a little apprehensive hoping that they wont be disappointed too quickly or he doesn’t turn out to be just another silly selfish politician who just happens to have skin a little darker than the usual presidents, I do hope I’m wrong though as that country certainly needs a lot of help.

I don’t think the problems in that country will start to change unless the ENTIRE nation embraces these three ideals

a) free health care
b) free education (primary, secondary and tertiary)
c) get rid of the guns.

Given a & b. their children can do anything, achieve anything, people can pull themselves out of poverty if they are educated and are taken care of when they are sick, and the last one, how can you learn to value a life when the norm seems to be – they annoy me, bang, their gone.

They have been re-running Roots on Fox Classics this week, episode three was last night. Its an interesting story, I read it when I was 12, but have never seen the mini-series as I’m a little young to of seen it when they first made it, and I have no memory of it being repeated.

So far it seems very dated, the acting is exaggerated and romantic, there seems very little realism in any of the performance, black nor white, the white actors seem like they are playing panto, and the black actors treat their characters like gentle idiots, it almost seems at times it’s a collection of caricatures from that part of their history.

Here are some thoughts on the first few episodes

Episodes 1 & 2 (shown together) – O J Simpson got second billing, he was only in it for 3 minutes, and spent half of that time running ??? He must have been famous once for something other than killing his ex-wife and her friend. Ed Asner appears with a shocking wig and terrible stick on beard, the acting from Ed is less than convincing, he is the ships Captain who transports the slaves to the US, the Dad from the Waltons is the ships mate, he gets killed on the return journey, we cheered when he got killed – that’s how bad the acting was. Geordi La Forge was alright but he played Kunta Kinte with a romantic /idealistic view of what life was like then – seems odd to my mind. The native women were mainly topless, if this tv series was made today, I’d doubt there would be topless women running about. Adama turns up towards the end and buys Kunta Kinte and renames him Toby. The acting must be really bad when I thought Adama (without his Battlestar) was the best in this episode.

Episode 3 – Toby is an man now, I don’t know the actor that played him but he is absolutely huge, large man with muscles bulging, even when he has his foot chopped off, theres a little bit of romance, a little bit of violence, a little bit of death and a little bit of Mr Brady – I don’t know but it still seems terribly dated, the acting is wooden, the costumes are like panto costumes, I’m not feeling an empathy yet for these characters but I should. It ends with Toby realizing he will never be free and accepting it, and celebrating the birth of his child, Kizzy.

Episode 4 tonight.

I wouldn’t mind seeing this remade, I think the subtly of modern acting styles and the realism in production design would bring a lot to a remake of this story.