‘Washington Black' has sky-high ambitions, but a steampunk setting and attention to character ground it

Boston Globe

5 days ago

Medwin Harris (Sterling K. Brown), a friend of Wash and our trusty narrator, begins the tale with a roadmap: 'It's about family lost and family found. A story about a young man and the boy he used to be. The story of a boy brave enough to change the world. … If
he
can beat it, maybe we can, too. That's why this just ain't his story. It's
our
story.'
To be clear: There is value here; this is a show worth watching. In an era when Black narratives are being scrubbed from
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Wash makes his great escape from the plantation via 'cloud-cutter,' a blimp-like flying machine designed by his master's brother, the abolitionist Christopher 'Titch' Wilde (Tom Ellis). The pair crash land into a pirate ship. Onboard, Wash befriends first mate Barrington (Miles Yekinni), who is from Guyana. Hinds is also a Guyana native, and the writing gives real depth to the tenderness with which Barrington describes the home he left long ago.
Barrington is a fully free man, he tells Wash. 'But your skin like mine,' young Wash points out. 'No matter how strong the bondage, we never stop pushin' back,' Barrington replies. 'We fight.' He teaches Wash about
He hears Nat's Southern drawl and says, 'But you and I are different.' It's the same reaction as with Barrington: A confused child sees someone the same, but somehow not. 'No, boy, we all come from the same place,' Nat replies. 'We've been scattered across this white man's world for so long, surviving on the scraps he gives, some of us don't even remember anything else.'
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Add in Medwin, who Wash meets years later (adult Wash is played by Ernest Kingsley Junior) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the point gets driven to smithereens. Medwin is much more of a father figure — and a keeper of the community — here than in the book, which allows Sterling K. Brown (also an executive producer) to bite into the material with his considerable acting chops. 'Why look out for me like you do?' Wash asks him. 'Only way Black folk gon' climb this mountain is if we pull each other along,' Medwin replies.
But there is value here, too, beyond this main point, hammered home so hard. Hinds' adaptation focuses much more on Wash's love interest, Tanna Goff (Iola Evans). She's the daughter of a British marine scientist named G.M. Goff (Rupert Graves) — with whom she dives for ocean specimens — and the show makes a point of giving her complexities, wants, and backstory. This iteration makes
Ryan B. Coogler's recent '
of life within
that identity. By fleshing out Tanna's backstory — and by showing us her mother and family in the Solomon Islands — this adaptation adds dimension, both to the narrative itself, and to the love story between Tanna and Wash. 'We're both dreamers,' she tells him. 'Can't we dream up a different world?'
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"Washington Black" makes ample use of its steampunk setting.
Cristian Salvatierra/Disney
And then there is the glorious steampunk of it all. There are notes of steampunk in the book — primarily in Titch's lighter-than-air airship, a hallmark of the genre — but the full flavor comes flooding through in the TV version. Titch arrives on-screen for the first time in a gleaming copper steam-powered truck; the pirate ship has an engine, driven by a perpetual motor, all wheels and coils; and the Goffs' diving suit, with its heavy metal helmet, is very Jules Verne. All of this lends wonder and levity to what can otherwise be serious and heavy subject matter.
Steampunk is, of course, punk. It is by its very nature countercultural, anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian. So it makes sense that 'Washington Black' aims to fly high, to imagine a better future. Edugyan's novel asks: What is true freedom? Hinds' version tries to answer: It is the ability to dream up a different world, alongside family lost and family found.
It's an admirable ambition, but — at least in the first four episodes available to review — we don't see that world yet. This show has a salient point to make, but can't quite seem to get there organically. Maybe those last four episodes will get us there — or maybe we have to dream up a different world ourselves.
WASHINGTON BLACK
Starring: Eddie Karanja, Ernest Kingsley Junior, Iola Evans, Sterling K. Brown, Tom Ellis. On Hulu