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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Disney's new drama brushes aside the evils of slavery for a tale of derring-do
Of the many epic adventures that have appeared on television in the last five or so years, few have been as gripping as the streamers' attempts to conquer family viewing. Washington Black (Disney+), a sprawling picaresque that follows a young, brilliant, plantation slave called George 'Wash' Black (played by Eddie Karanja as a child and Ernest Kingsley Junior as an adult) is the latest attempt. Beginning on Barbados in 1837, Wash's potential is spotted immediately by a British abolitionist and amateur scientist called Titch (Tom Ellis), and together they work to build a Heath-Robinson flying machine. When Wash is involved in the killing of a white man – maybe he did it, maybe he didn't – who is the evil plantation owner's brother no less, he hitches up with Titch, fires up the airship and makes his escape. There follows many an episode of derring-do as they make their way north, first to Virginia, then up through Nova Scotia, on round the Arctic and finally down into Europe and eventually North Africa. All the while a scowling bounty hunter is on Wash's tail, for jeopardy and plot propulsion. Modern television abhors a linear narrative, and so this big-budget, period globe-trotting is intercut with two other stories. In the early episodes we flash-forward to Wash eight years later, hiding out in Halifax, Nova Scotia as a grown man. He has maintained and cultivated his interest in science to the best that a former slave in hiding possibly can, so when a renowned British botanist called Goff (Rupert Graves, good as ever) gets off the boat, there's finally a chance for Wash to fulfil his ambitions. Unfortunately, but also fortunately for Wash, Goff arrives with his daughter Tanna (Iola Evans). Unbeknownst to her, she has been lined up by her father for an arranged marriage and so when she inevitably falls for Wash, she, he and her dad all find themselves in a right inter-generational pickle. Washington Black is therefore attempting to do a lot of things at once. It is a bowdlerised Underground Railroad that is nonetheless a salutary reminder to younger viewers of the wickedness of slavery. It is also a rousing, Around the World in 80 Days-style hop-and-stop that doesn't want you to think too hard about the wickedness of slavery because this is supposed to be fun. And there is Romeo and Juliet in there too, a tale of forbidden love and tragic romance that, by having Tanna as a black woman passing as white, has things to say about social discrimination and prejudice. The show certainly makes a better fist of this kind of four-quadrant viewing than, say, Amazon's recent Nautilus. That was a similarly grand confection about Captain Nemo and his submarine that foundered on a duff script. (Interestingly, it was originally a Disney production and you wonder if they ditched it because a better version of the same thing – this – came along.) Still, however, Washington Black underestimates younger viewers. Its hero is too heroic when the story demands it (he is stoical, a genius and even a dab hand with watercolours) and then suddenly too fallible when it doesn't (he goes sub aqua in a copper bell helmet, is told specifically that there's a valve for the oxygen, but then Dr Science somehow nearly suffocates). The characters all speak in cue-card aphorisms of the sort that primary school teachers pin to the walls. Even the doomed love story is too predictably doomed. My suspicion – and it is only a suspicion, bearing in mind that I sit squarely in the dull and crusty demographic – is that trying to please a young audience by sanitising a slave narrative won't work. Challenging your viewers has got to be better than patronising them. Washington Black looks at those moral grey areas but chooses to present the world in black and white.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Washington Black review – the romantic bits could have been stolen from a bad pop song
Esi Edugyan's 2018 novel Washington Black is an unorthodox, steampunk-infused account of the era when transatlantic slavery cast a dark shadow over much of the world. Its hero is George Washington Black – or Wash for short – a Black boy of 11, growing up on a Barbados plantation. He becomes the protege of a well-meaning white scientist, Titch (who happens to be the brother of Wash's merciless master, Erasmus). Together they work on crafting the 'Cloud Cutter', an experimental airship that offers them an escape from the plantation when Wash is accused of murder – but which crashes over the Atlantic during a storm. Spoiler alert: the pair make it out of that episode alive, with Wash fleeing to Virginia, and later Canada. A Guardian review described scenes from the novel as '[unfolding] with a Tarantino-esque savagery', and the book doesn't shy away from graphic depictions of violence and suicide, nor frequent use of the N-word. It is also described as having a 'fairytale atmosphere' – something the Disney-owned Hulu homed in on above all else. As a TV series, Washington Black feels less like a grownup drama and more like the sort of quasi-historical show that teachers play to their pupils as an end-of-term treat. Let's start with the positives, though. The stunning scenery of Nova Scotia (which also doubles as Virginia) is a constant – a rugged, romantic backdrop to the action. Everyone looks the part, too: Sterling K Brown (also an executive producer) is rarely out of regal purple corduroy as Halifax town leader Medwin Harris, while the English contingent – among them Tom Ellis's Titch and Rupert Graves's Mr Goff – are Regencyfied to the max. (If you are a fan of towering 19th-century headgear, this is definitely the show for you.) The cast are excellent, including but not limited to Brown – who can convey so much emotion with the mere quiver of an eyebrow – and Eddie Karanja and Ernest Kingsley Jr, who do just the right amount of emoting as the young and slightly-less-young Wash. It is very easy to watch, and the four episodes delivered to press (there are eight in total) slip down easily and endearingly. But, really, that lack of friction is a problem. From the mawkish string soundtrack to some of the most heavy-handed dialogue ever committed to screen and the most cliched of death scenes (one character dies while stuttering out their final words and clutching at a stab wound), Washington Black lacks bite. To be clear, I don't believe that all productions about slavery have to be laced with unending trauma and pain, and the emphasis on science is a nice departure from the harsh realities of the era. But in sanding down the corners of its source material, it ends up with an almost uncanny feel. It's not Ellis's fault, but the idea that anybody – never mind the most enlightened abolitionists of the age – would have answered the question 'Is this boy your slave?' with 'He's my friend!' is risible. In fact, watching Ellis as an antebellum-era answer to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's Caractacus Potts is a jarring experience. Julian Rhind-Tutt is perfectly terrifying as Erasmus, but – with the book's darker moments removed – he is a sociopath without a cause. One character simply describes themself as 'an unhinged disgrace', as shorthand for the audience learning why they are unhinged or disgraceful. It didn't have to be 'Tarantino-esque' – but did it have to be quite so PG? Washington Black is also something of a romance, another area where it wobbles along. Kingsley Jr and Iola Evans – who plays a mixed-race, white-passing noblewoman named Tanna – give it their best shot. But lines such as 'We'll create a world of our own' and 'She breathes life into me' feel as if they have been lifted from a bad pop song. By the time we get to 'My everything is better with you', I have begun to feel queasy. Tanna is distraught that her white father has never allowed her to explore the other side of herself, and her maternal connection to Solomon Islands. Unfortunately, we must learn all this through trite dialogue that sounds less like the stuff of a Disney+ drama, and more like the things that Disney princesses – locked in their gilded cages – sing about in their films. Washington Black comes with plenty of potential and, as an exercise in world-building, it is rich and appealing. But, unlike the Cloud Cutter, this is a creation that never takes flight. The hats really are lovely, but they are just not enough. Washington Black is on Disney+ now.
CBC
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
The TV adaptation of Esi Edugyan's novel Washington Black will surprise fans of the books
Esi Edugyan says Disney Plus's take on her acclaimed historical novel Washington Black will surprise anyone familiar with the sprawling coming-of-age tale. There are significant changes to the hero and his relationships, wholly invented scenes and entirely new characters inserted by showrunners and executive producers Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and Kimberly Ann Harrison. Edugyan says she accepted early on that transforming her Giller Prize-winning saga into an eight-part streaming show would mean surrendering her hold on the story, noting she "very much took a back seat" in the process. "It's probably never a favourable thing to have the writer of the book kind of lurking in the background, looking over your shoulder, saying, 'Why have you done this and not that?'" Edugyan says in a recent video call from her home office in Victoria. "I just kind of understood that this was somebody else's art." Like the book, which was championed by Olympic swimmer Mark Tewksbury on Canada Reads 2022, the TV series recounts the fantastical life of a boy born into slavery on a Barbados sugar plantation in the 19th century. Actor Eddie Karanja plays the young hero and Ernest Kingsley Jr. portrays the older Washington Black. At age 11, Wash is taken under the wing of his master's younger abolitionist brother Titch, played by Tom Ellis, who uses the boy as ballast for an experimental flying machine but soon recognizes his aptitude for art and science. Amid this burgeoning friendship, Wash is disfigured in a trial run and then implicated in a crime, forcing him and Titch to flee the plantation. Edugyan's tale is a first-person account by an 18-year-old Wash who looks back on a lifelong search for freedom and meaning that sends him to extreme corners of the world. The Disney version is narrated by Sterling K. Brown's Medwin, a mere side character in the book who runs Wash's boarding house in Halifax. Onscreen, Medwin is a mentor to Wash and gets his own backstory and love interest, all part of what Hinds explains as "the journey of adaptation." As such, Halifax features more prominently in the Disney story, which filmed in and around the Atlantic capital, as well as in Mexico and Iceland to capture scenes set in Virginia, the Arctic, London and Morocco. Hinds says Nova Scotia was home for about six months, with shooting locations including Peggy's Cove, Lunenburg, Uniacke Estate Museum Park in Mount Uniacke and the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site in Cape Breton. He says Halifax in particular "really adopted us as a crew" as they learned the local history of Black settlements in Canada. "There was a young man who used to cut my hair in Halifax and one day we were talking — he told me his family had been there, I think, 400 years. Which for an American immigrant like myself, who's first-generation American, this was just completely mind-blowing," he says in joint a video call from Los Angeles with Harrison. "A big part of what we're doing is trying to bake ourselves in the nooks and crannies and the history of the place. And I did as best as I could to let that infuse the actual storytelling itself." Among the biggest changes is the removal of Wash's facial scars, notes Edugyan, who became the first Black woman to win the Giller in 2011 for Half-Blood Blues and only the third author to win twice when Washington Black claimed the title in 2018. In the Disney version, the scar is on Wash's chest, where it's hidden from view. "That is quite a departure from the novel," says Edugyan. "That was a very deliberate choice on my part to have that be part of how Washington confronts the world — that he's not only an enslaved person but that he also carries with him this disfigurement, which gives him this sort of double estrangement." Edugyan describes the series as "a kind of translation or interpretation of the novel" to satisfy a visual medium and the demands of episodic storytelling. Her jazz-infused Half-Blood Blues was also optioned for the screen, by Toronto's Clement Virgo, which Edugyan says is still in the works. Hinds says he regards the screen version of Washington Black as "the same house" but bigger, with an expanded world that adds a romantic rival for Wash and a deeper backstory for the white-passing love interest Tanna, born to a Black mother in the Solomon Islands. "Because the TV medium just gives you room to explore things that Esi kind of laid out that were really great opportunities — really delving into Tanna's background or really seeing what the Solomon Islands meant (to Tanna)," he says. "With any adaptation, or at least the ones that I've written, the first thing is to find the emotional DNA of the story, right? And once I realized that the story that Esi was telling about finding hope and finding agency and finding freedom, once you sort of lock into the emotional core of what the characters' journey is, everything else makes sense. Both in terms of what you keep in and what you leave out." "It's quite different from the novel," Edugyan adds. "Anybody who's familiar with the source work will be surprised. But I think it's its own piece of art and I'm looking forward to having people watch it and to hearing reactions."
Daily Mail
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Andrea Corr, 51, showcases her incredibly toned figure in a skimpy patterned bikini as she hits the beach in sun-soaked Barbados
Andrea Corr showcased her age-defying figure as she hit the beach while holidaying in sun-soaked Barbados on Monday. The iconic Irish singer, 51, slipped into a colourful patterned bikini which boasted a triangular top and drawstring bottoms. The tiny two piece perfectly displayed her toned physique while she kept a low profile beneath shades and a navy baseball cap. The lead singer of Celtic pop rock group The Corrs enjoyed a cooling dip in the clear blue ocean before strolling along the sand. Andrea later returned to her party and appeared in great spirits as she chatted while topping up her tan. It comes after the singer surprised many fans earlier this year when she was unveiled as the Snail on the most recent series of The Masked Singer. After her identity was unveiled, she quipped: 'I had such a good time, everyone's been lovely, it's been really joyous. I wanted to do it for the children.' She added that she 'loved' her glittery pink costume and hadn't told a single person she was taking part in the ITV competition. The star had just missed out on a spot in the top five, with the show eventually won by West End star Samantha Barks. In 2022, The Corrs performed for the first time together in five years at Hope Estate Winery, in Australia's Hunter Valley. The 90s band is made up of siblings Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and Jim. Andrea was interviewed by Australian radio station Triple M ahead of their return where she spoke about the family band and their shared talent. She said: 'We've often wondered over the years why one of us wasn't a complete dud, like what are the chances?' 'I mean, music is an amazing thing to do. We do love it. 'Our parents brought us up playing music, listening to music, listening to them. So we're just been doing it our entire life.' Last year, Andrea took to the stage again back in the summer as The Corrs thrilled festival goers at BST Hyde Park. On the bill at the Hyde Park festival as a special guest of Shania Twain's headline show, the family band's performance was hailed as 'magnificent'. Fans were quick to show their adoration at the band's performance, taking to X, formerly Twitter, to write: 'At BST. The Corrs are a stupendously beautiful family,'; 'The Corrs, very much on form!'; 'Magnificent #thecorrs,'; 'A great day to drink a beer and listen to the Corrs. Wherever you are (I am at Hyde Park for the Corrs and Shania Twain), drink a beer and listen to the Corrs today.'
The Independent
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
'Washington Black' is the show that could, just like its main character
'Washington Black' just seemed destined for a screen adaptation. The 2018 novel by Canadian writer Esi Edugyan caught actor Sterling K. Brown's eye. As he put the wheels in motion, things just started to line up in a most un-Hollywood fashion — so much so that Brown started to believe strongly the project was meant to be. 'Sometimes you keep hitting barricades and obstacles and you're like 'Well maybe I should step away.' No, things kept falling into line in such a lovely way that let me know that we were moving in the direction we were supposed to go,' he recalls. It felt appropriate that the universe wanted a coming-of-age story about a Black boy with big dreams, who goes from the Barbados plantation where he was born to finding freedom, love and friendship across the seas. The eight-episode miniseries premieres Wednesday on Hulu. Brown noted that, as a producer, he wants to put out tales that can benefit society. 'I think for me it's been the sort of fare that has been reserved for people that don't look like us so much,' he says — so the opportunity to make it happen was 'very exciting.' The idea of doing a show where a young person overcomes tumultuous circumstances through hope and joy enchanted him: 'They were telling him, 'Maybe you should dream smaller.' He just kept going up. It's beautiful.' Adapting the book The first stop was finding a writer and Selwyn Seyfu Hinds fit the bill perfectly. His lyrical style and family background inspired Brown — who also acts in the show — to get him on board as one of the two showrunners. Born and raised in Guyana, Hinds moved to the United States as a teen with his family, and felt the story spoke to him personally. 'It's always been part of my desire as a writer to tell stories that connect the Caribbean to the overall diaspora,' Hinds says. The show follows 11-year-old George Washington 'Wash' Black, born into slavery in Barbados on a plantation owned by the Wilde family in the 1830s. His quick mind, inquisitiveness and knack for science get the attention of Christopher 'Titch' Wilde (Tom Ellis), an inventor, who enlists him as his assistant. A tragic turn of events forces them to run away together and takes them on adventures on the high seas, North America and ultimately the Arctic; the story stretches across almost a decade. Adapting it into eight episodes required changes to the book, but they kept to the emotional core of the journey. 'It's big and expansive, not for its own sake, but because I think that thematically reflects the character's heart and the character's own ambitions,' says Hinds. The series, which filmed across locations in Nova Scotia, Canada; Virginia, Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Iceland took nine months to complete. Co-showrunner Kim Harrison is still incredulous at pulling off such a massive endeavor of juggling multiple locations, temperamental weather and stars' schedules. 'When you look back at the finished product, you're like, 'Wow, we did that,'' she says of the feat. Two stars are born, with a mentor to boot Among the many elements that had to work, the most crucial one, perhaps, was finding its young leads — one actor to play young Wash and another to play him as a young adult. After months and months of auditions and thousands of tapes, they both revealed themselves in an 'undeniable' way to the producers. 'They both carry the truth of the character in their eyes … like they've got the same emotional expression and intelligence and empathy in their in their eyes,' Hinds says. He's speaking of Ernest Kingsley Jr. and Eddie Karanja, who was just 14 at the time. Kingsley got the older part three months out of acting school in London; he was bowled over when he had to do a chemistry read with Brown, who stars as Medwin Harris, a Black community leader and father figure in the Nova Scotia years. Brown found himself impressed by the newcomer immediately. 'This kid embodies the hopefulness, the sort of Black boy joy that is the engine that drives the show,' he recalls thinking during auditions. Brown inadvertently became a mentor to the inexperienced actors on set because he wanted all of them to feel comfortable. He remembers how young actors feel unable to voice doubts or practical questions because everyone else seems to know what they're supposed to do. 'You just want to give them the space to share all of that so we can move through it together,' he says. He extended the same helping hand to Iola Evans, who plays older Wash's love interest, and Edward Bluemel, her suitor. Brown always made time in his busy schedule to visit the set to watch, listen and generally be a hype man. Don't call him a baddie Charles Dance, the inscrutable paterfamilias James Wilde, surprised everyone who'd seen him in 'Game of Thrones.' Hinds recollects even Ellis, who plays Dance's character's son, gave a speech at the wrap party in Iceland saying how shockingly nice Dance was — he had been terrified before meeting him. 'So the fact that Charles is scary and intimidating just worked beautifully for us,' laughs Hinds as Ellis channeled it into his performance. Karanja says he even got a boost from Dance: 'Charles was the warmest guy and he continued to give me confidence in myself as an actor.'
