Kindred

Matt Roush says...

From FX, a provocative eight-part series brings Octavia E. Butler’s celebrated 1979 novel to TV, a bizarre blend of time-travel fantasy and historical drama of antebellum slavery. Newcomer Mallori Johnson is impressive as Dana, a contemporary Black woman who moves to L.A., where she hopes to write for TV, when she’s suddenly swept into a nightmarish alt-reality after being transported to an early 19th-century plantation that’s somehow connected to her family’s clouded past. Disoriented, Dana must learn to adapt to an enslaved culture while jumping back and forth in time, eventually ensnaring her new white boyfriend Kevin (Micah Stock), who’s just as confused though not as endangered. It’s an intriguing and compelling premise, but by turning Butler’s taut parable into an open-ended series, Kindred loses much of its urgency, and most of the changes from the source material aren’t an improvement.

What's Worth Watching (Dec 13)