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A new 'Roots' for a new century

The first job of any remake is to justify itself. Why do we need a new version of Roots, the beloved 1977 ABC mini-series whose finale more than 100 million people watched and whose most recent rerun - in high-definition on TV One - was only last fall?

Forest Whitaker, left, and Malachi Kirby play Fidler and Kunta Kinte in History's "Roots" remake. STEVE DIETL / History
Forest Whitaker, left, and Malachi Kirby play Fidler and Kunta Kinte in History's "Roots" remake. STEVE DIETL / HistoryRead more

The first job of any remake is to justify itself.

Why do we need a new version of Roots, the beloved 1977 ABC mini-series whose finale more than 100 million people watched and whose most recent rerun - in high-definition on TV One - was only last fall?

Because the world has changed enough in 39 years to justify more sophisticated writing and better production values, but not enough to make Roots any less relevant.

Our understanding of the history underlying Roots has changed, too, though not in ways that hurt the History Channel's four-night version, which premieres at 9 p.m. Memorial Day and will be simulcast on A&E and Lifetime.

It's still a gripping story, convincingly performed. Even if a fragmented TV universe means it's unlikely ever again to grip, or convince, an audience quite so large.

That fragmented universe has also given us Underground, the WGN America thriller about the Underground Railroad whose premiere this season set a ratings record for the channel.

As hard as it is to separate the new Roots from the impact of the original, I found the writing in this one stronger, the presentation more cinematic.

Malachi Kirby, an English actor, shines as Kunta Kinte, the role that LeVar Burton and John Amos once shared and that brought Burton, a co-executive producer on the new Roots, his first taste of fame.

Laurence Fishburne (Black-ish) narrates, and briefly appears, as Roots author Alex Haley. Forest Whitaker plays Kunta's friend and protector Fiddler, and Anika Noni Rose (The Good Wife) plays Kunta's daughter, Kizzy.

Regé-Jean Page is the charming Chicken George and Erica Tazel (Justified), his long-suffering wife, Matilda.

James Purefoy (The Following), Matthew Goode (The Good Wife), and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors) play slave owners who all figure in Haley's story.

Philly's Questlove was the show's executive music producer.

Filmed partly in South Africa, which doubles for Gambia more convincingly than the state of Georgia did in the original, this Roots offers a more historically grounded picture of the region's place in the 18th century slave trade (and doesn't include O.J. Simpson, whose appearance in the original resonates differently today).

It drops the character of the guilt-ridden white slave-ship captain. Reportedly added to the mini-series to make white viewers feel a bit better, the role won Ed Asner an Emmy but shouldn't have comforted anyone.

The new Roots also has the African Kunta questioning the custom of "jumping the broom," popularized in the 1977 series, and contradicting the American-born slaves' perception that the practice originated in Africa.

"Belle, they're making fun of us," Kunta argues to his bride (Emayatzy Corinealdi, Hand of God), suggesting the ritual, which suited some slave owners by offering the illusion of stability but no legal protection, had more likely been "passed down from master to slave."

At the same time, this Roots doesn't exactly claim to be as specific a history as some may once have considered it.

"The truth can never be known. It can only be told in a story," Fishburne's Haley says in a fanciful, emotional epilogue. "There was once a boy who was taken from his family and carried halfway around the world. He lived to start a new family, and in his journey, he became a hero for a new nation. I hope my story honors him."

When Haley's 1976 book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, became a best seller, the New York Times listed the novelistic work as nonfiction, apparently because of Haley's narrative of tracing his ancestry from freedom back through slavery, all the way to a specific village in Gambia, the birthplace of one Kunta Kinte, a young Mandinka warrior.

Some researchers later questioned parts of Haley's accounts, pointing to records that didn't correspond to names on his family tree. It's been suggested he could have inadvertently influenced the West African storyteller who confirmed Kunta's provenance.

Haley, who died in 1992, settled out of court in 1978 with the author of a novel, The African, conceding that three passages from that book had found their way into Roots. According to the Times, he denied having heard of The African before Roots was published and suggested the passages may have come, unattributed, from materials he'd received from others during his research.

Yet Haley's story remains powerful for its depiction of a family whose oral history conferred a sense of identity even a century of enslavement couldn't erase.

As someone whose family legends have frequently failed to match genealogical resources, I know the pull of a history that doesn't always line up perfectly with facts.

The stories we're told, and that we tell ourselves, aren't only more colorful than a name on a ship's manifest or a census record; they're as much a part of who we are as the DNA that can now be used to contradict our cherished origin stories.

If the line that reached from Africa to Haley, that survived captivity and deprivation and found success in the country it helped to build, was influenced by a passed-down memory of an African ancestor who refused to yield, I'd say that story did its job. And that it bears repeating.

graye@phillynews.com

215-854-5950@elgray

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