The show repeats the steps ad nauseam until they have no impact beyond being extremely depressing. This, sadly, mirrors the experience of watching it – what at first elicited shock becomes increasingly mundane. But over the course of the series Dana becomes increasingly numb to violence, and it takes more and more hostility to elicit that same response. While the precise cause of the time travel is never made explicit, it is established that Dana returns to the present at moments of high stress when she feels her life is in danger. To make matters worse, Kevin begins to travel back to the past alongside Dana and takes on the role of her owner in this world, which provides her with some protection, but makes the relationship between the two all the more fraught. This is made murkier by Rufus being the white son of a brutal plantation owner, and Dana ultimately facilitating the incident that led to her bloodline: the future assault and impregnation of an enslaved black woman. She has a budding relationship with aspiring musician Kevin, which is complicated when Dana finds herself transported back to early 19th century Maryland every time her ancestor Rufus’s life is in danger – and she has to save his life in order to secure her bloodline. We follow an aspiring Black soap opera writer who uses her inheritance to move to suburban LA, complete with McMansion and uppity white micro-aggression-heavy neighbours. Where the novel had its protagonist Dana bouncing between 1976 and the antebellum south, the television adaptation specifies the present as 2016.

But as the show dives into its central concept, it becomes increasingly insubstantial, with an accelerating brutality that feels hollow and gratuitous. Those classy credentials are clear in the pilot where a tense family dinner at a restaurant and subsequent “meet cute” with a charming waiter are scintillatingly written and performed. Its young star, Mallori Johnson, comes with Julliard school of performing arts’ stamp of approval. The series is developed by the acclaimed playwright, and MacArthur-certified genius, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, with a pilot directed by buzzy Zola director Janicza Bravo. A dapting a beloved literary classic is a daunting task, but the team behind Kindred, based on Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel – and its time-travelling exploration of slavery – is a promising one.

Octavia butler kindred series