Roots Reboot May 30, 2016

[Zorral]

Jonathan Rhys Meyers  plays, what else? a right sob in the A&E - History Channel reboot of Roots, beginning on May 30th, 4 nights.  About 8 hours.  Like the 1970's series, "everybody" has bit parts, including Matthew Goode (Downtown Abbey, The Good Wife), Laurence Fishburne,   Erica Tazel (Rachel Brooks in Justified, in which I enjoyed greatly the actress and her role), and, providing by far the best acting in any of the roles, Forest Whitaker.

The first 3 episodes are quite good, with a few historical quibbles on my part.  But the final, episode 4, in the era of secession, declaration of the War of Southern Aggression, The Wah itself, the aftermath of the Wah, while all these African Americans, most of them enslaved, tromp multiple times back-and-forth between North Carolina and Tennessee, often with serious wounds, etc. and no trouble from white people (except from some Union troops), just so Haley, the plagerist of The African, out of which he carved the Roots novel, can claim Kunta Kinte's ancestors as his own, gave me lots of historical vexes and annoyances.  And really, just how did Chicken George and Co. survive the massacre of Fort Pillow??????