Tonight “Underground” Begins the Powerful Story of the Underground Railroad

[divider type=”thin”] “Heard it all before.” Admittedly, that was my initial reaction when hearing of a new TV slave drama. “Heard it all before – how many more slave dramas do we need?” It wasn’t until I was challenged to recount the slave TV dramas I remember did I realize I had not seen nearly as many as I felt I had. Maybe because the stories are so heavy that they weigh on viewers longer than a show with more levity; perhaps because Roots and other historical portrayals are so iconic they seem all-encompassing of America’s history of slavery. Maybe Quentin Tarantino and the positive reception of a man I find rather revolting jaded me to any new dramatization of slavery. Regardless, I was wrong, and I hadn’t seen it all before. As it turns out, Underground, premiering on WGN, will actually be the first major TV drama telling the story of the Underground Railroad. If that isn’t surprising to you, it sure as hell was for me as I racked my brain only to recall the episode of A Different World where a dilapidated wall gave way to a tunnel’s discovery. We haven’t seen a drama about the Underground Railroad? And now we’ll have one? Suddenly my outlook on this show’s potential had changed, and only rose higher from there. What I saw in Underground was not a typical slave story of pain and oppression. It has those elements, of course – addressing slavery without it would be insultingly remiss, like the recently pulled children’s book about George Washington’s cook – but rather th…