Africans In America

By JAMES COLLINS

In four 90-minute episodes, this documentary attempts to tell the story of slavery from 1619, when a ship carrying a cargo of Africans arrived at Jamestown, to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The material is inherently fascinating, and overall the producers have done a fine job of presenting it, combining historical images, impressionistic re-enactments, interviews with historians and voice-over readings of letters and diaries (the narration is spoken by Angela Bassett). If there's a quibble, it's that the re-enactments, done in soft-focus and slow motion, are overused, and one wishes for a fuller description of the slaves' separate culture. Nevertheless, the viewer will come away with a vivid understanding of how slavery flourished in the land of freedom and what costs it imposed.

--By James Collins