‘The Underground Railroad’ is a flawless adaptation of a great American novel

In some cases it takes a lifetime of work to build a case for an individual’s genius. There are more remarkable minds lost to history than there are recognized posthumously, and an even smaller number of people are acknowledged as exceptional talents while they are still working. Barry Jenkins and Colson Whitehead are two living creators whose genius is evident today. Whitehead’s recognition comes from the critical acclaim and awards heaped on his books since the publication of his 1991 debut The Intuitionist, which continued through his back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes for The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. Jenkins’ two most recent writer-director film credits are the Academy Award–winning Moonlight and acclaimed If Beale Street Could Talk.

The Underground Railroad, streaming now on Amazon Prime Video, combines the skillsets of these two creative titans with overwhelmingly excellent results. Every episode of this show is a marvel of theme, character, and story that lives up to Whitehead’s literary vision of magical realism and perseverance; simultaneously each installment is a magnificent showcase of performance and visual direction that proves Jenkins’ mastery behind the camera is not limited to film and is instead a consistent, repeatable expression of his talent. 

Both the show and Whitehead’s book hew to the premise of an alternate reality where the underground railroad, which in our world was a network of safehouses and routes that Black people used to escape slavery, is an actual subterranean train system with stations, cars, and conductors. When Cora and Caesar, two enslaved people on a Georgia plantation, escape and board the train their first ride is only the beginning of a journey through a warped mirror image of the American south and beyond. 

For example, the enslavement of Black people is “abolished” in North Carolina because any Black person found within state lines is immediately executed and Tennessee is a wasteland of ashes and disease. The unexplained magical realism of the train is enhanced by the requirement to give testimony upon boarding, which adds up to a chronicle of Black lives the likes of which our reality was denied. 

Though many characters come and go as The Underground Railroad makes its way through the tunnels, Cora is the show’s narrative constant. Actor Thuso Mbedu plays her with astounding believability and nuance, a task that seems herculean at the start of the show when Cora is subjected to the horrors of enslavement and only becomes more difficult and impressive as the character experiences much more of the world. Cora’s foil is Ridgeway, the slave catcher played by Joel Edgerton, a character whose single-minded pursuit of Cora was likened to Captain Ahab from Moby Dick or Javert from Les Misérables when Whitehead’s book came out and maintains his iconic, self-destructive villainy in this series. 

The miraculous casting of Edgerton and Mbedu is the rule rather than the exception in The Underground Railroad, as every actor that shows up is perfectly placed regardless of their screen time. Aaron Pierre plays Caesar, Cora’s fellow escapee and a fiercely intelligent presence whose unrecognized genius reflects the millions of other minds whose potential was wasted by systemic oppression. Sheila Atim is Cora’s mother Mabel, who appears in flashbacks and gives the main narrative a greater sense of history. The most impressive and fascinating casting is child actor Chase Dillon, a young Black boy Ridgeway keeps as his assistant in slave-catching and maintains a heartbreaking attachment to the show’s cruelest character. 

The miraculousness of the cast exists in symbiosis with the brilliance of The Underground Railroad‘s scripts, which weave gut-punching thematic text with enough raw silence to give each actor room to perform to the topmost level of their ability. There are tangible points where some of the guest or recurring actors, including Lily Rabe, William Jackson Harper, and Amber Gray, deliver line readings so great that absolutely everyone involved should feel lucky to even be there — the actors for performing that line, the writers (which include Barry Jenkins, Nathan C. Parker, Jacqueline Hoyt, Allison Davis, Adrienne Rush, and Jihan Crowther) for writing it, and anyone on set who may have contributed to the scene where it was uttered.

Though all episodes of The Underground Railroad are available to watch at once, is it not an easy show to binge. Part of that is because of the subject matter, but some people are equipped to handle lots of heavy content in hour-plus doses. The other part is how complete each episode feels, how it delivers its message and contributes to the greater narrative with all of its individual beauty and horror. That and the sheer quality of each episode makes nine of them feel like straight up Barry Jenkins films, and watching them all in a row is emotionally akin to watching Moonlight or Beale on repeat for ten hours. One episode is a 20-minute aside from the main plot and is still an astounding short film with less than three minutes of dialogue. 

In many ways The Underground Railroad feels like less of a TV show and more of an event, the same way Alex Haley’s Roots riveted the American public, shifted Black storytelling as a visual medium, and took on mythic status after its premiere in 1977. While this show tells the fictional story of a woman who never existed in a different America to ours, its monumental and horrifying truths are still recognizable. The genius of both Barry Jenkins and Colson Whitehead is their ability to reshape such truths into lasting and remarkable art. 

The Underground Railroad is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.