in what I was watching the first episodes of ‘Kinship’ (Kindred), the adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s novel that arrives this Wednesday at Disney +, I did not stop having the feeling that if it had been on Netflix it would not have gone so unnoticed.
I’m not saying that the series starring Mallori Johnson is a great gem to discover. But yes, this tale of time travel, mixed with a good family mystery, It has all the elements to be able to hook in his proposal with that mixture of themes and genres. She does it halfway.
The pity is that since Hulu decided to cancel mercilessly and we were left in the middle of a temporary adventure of Dana that could have marked the “new” ‘Outlander’. Especially now that the temporal drama of the Scots is at its last bars.
Losses in adaptation
With a couple of major changes here and there from the original novel, ‘Kinship’ begins with the move of a television writer who moves to Los Angeles to be closer to the little family he has. She will soon begin to experience time travel to a farm in pre-Civil War Maryland.
He why these traumatic trips Back in time to an era in which, being black, she will be taken as a slave is something that the series will try to answer little by little in which this past is linked to the family mystery of the death of the mother of the protagonist.
The The premise of Butler’s story was as simple as it was profound.: I wanted to explore the times of slavery from a modern perspective and go far beyond action/reaction or “what a hard times” speech. Yes ok Branden Jacobs Jenkins understands what Butler wanted to tell in his novel, it seems that to make the story more televised nuances have been lost in the adaptation.
In fact, we have some other change that, although it seems minor, changes things a lot: instead of having a very established couple as in the books, Dana and Kevin (Micah Stock) just met, which gives it a very different lookor (even romantic comedy at times) to all the implications that develop in ‘Kinship’.
Although I think there is a good direction, somewhat conventional, but effective after all, sometimes you need a little more strength when capturing the facts, the torture and other harsh scenes that arise. Without needing to go as far as “torture porn”, it does sometimes ask to be a bit ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ to portray these oppressions.
A cast that raises the bar
This, together with a production that seems somewhat cheap and a script that is not very incisive, makes ‘Kinship’ lose some points by being soft. Which is not to say that Jacobs-Jenkins and company are one-armed in executing the series. They know how to use times and structures very well to keep us, despite these defects, continually on edge.
Undoubtedly, the best of the series lies in its cast. Still fledgling Mallori Johnson (whose TV debut was in ‘WeCrashed’) she is splendid in a leading role that she masters quite well and manages to elevate the story when it needs it most.
Even with its few virtues and notable flaws, I have found myself hooked on Dana’s story in ‘Kinship’ and I really believe that if they had polished things around here and there and, by the way, a second chance, we could be talking about a new streaming obsession today. Too bad it’s not like that.
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