Several films have tackled the topic of slavery in recent years - and it's now getting TV treatment on 'The Book of Negroes', writes Rebecca Davis Making a commercially successful TV series about slavery is no mean feat. This is partly because it's not exactly a cheerful subject. "I think I'll chill out by binge-watching a six-hour miniseries about slavery," is not something one imagines hearing frequently. But the other reason it's a daunting prospect is because many would say that the definitive series about slavery has already been made - almost 40 years ago. Roots premiered in 1977, and the series finale smashed all previous records for viewership in the US.story_article_left1Slavery as a subject seems to be having a moment. In recent years we've seen a number of big-ticket films dealing with the topic - Twelve Years a Slave and Django Unchained, to name two - and it's now getting TV treatment on The Book of Negroes (DStv channel 129). It's a Canadian-US production, but there's a gratifying South African link. Familiar faces crop up, some locations may be recognised, and the cinematography is by South African Giulio Biccari.He has done us proud: the series is visually magnificent. Certain frames are so arresting that they momentarily take your breath away, including the first sequence. There we meet Aminata Diallo, addressing an audience of old white dudes in London in 1807. "I seem to have trouble dying," are her first words. "By all accounts I should not have lived this long."She ain't joking. The show takes us back in time to Aminata's childhood in Mali in the 1700s. There wasn't much to suggest that it was the olden days, aesthetically speaking, except that everybody wore quite a lot of shells. It does make you think how rare it is to see filmic depictions of pre-20th-century Africa, though. Dickens-era London, for instance, is instantly familiar because we've been shown it so often. When last did you see 1780s Africa on screen?Aminata's seemingly idyllic childhood comes to an abrupt end when her family is set upon by black collaborators working for white slave traders, and she is sent across the seas to America. A note to sensitive viewers: the show can be pretty harrowing. Its depictions of violence are brutal. There's something admirable about its forthrightness in this regard, though. Slavery was brutal, and confronting that fact is painful but necessary. One aspect of the show which I found distracting throughout the first episode was its handling of language. Aminata and her family presumably would have spoken a Malian dialect. Instead, the actors speak sort of ambiguously accented English. Which is fine until Aminata is kidnapped by the white, British slave traders - one of whom then proceeds to teach her English. "But she's been speaking English all the bloody time!" you want to yell. "She speaks better English than him!" It takes a major imaginative exercise not to find that weird. I also found some of the writing a tiny bit twee, as if it was copy for an Amarula ad. "The big river touches the sky," marvels Aminata, upon encountering the ocean. In America, where she's so cold her breath is coming out like vapour, she asks a fellow slave: "Is my mouth on fire? Are we under a spell?" Then again, I also have absolutely no sense of the kind of things a Malian 11-year-old would plausibly say in 1780, so maybe I should shut up.These minor quibbles aside, though, the show looks set to be provocative and intelligent. Reckoning with the past is something that we haven't been all that successful with, as South Africans. Maybe we could learn a thing or two...