‘The Long Song’ received rave reviews after 2018 release in UK

The United States’ Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will next Sunday (January 31) premiere the critically acclaimed miniseries, The Long Song, a drama depicting the end of slavery in Jamaica.

The three-part series, which will appear as part of PBS’ anthology block, Masterpiece Classic, is set on a sugarcane plantation during the end of slavery in 19th Century Jamaica. The drama focuses on the life of July, a young enslaved woman with an indomitable spirit, played by Tamara Lawrance, and her detestable mistress, Caroline Mortimer (Hayley Atwell).

Their lives change with the arrival of the charming new overseer, Robert Goodwin (Jack Lowden), who sets out to improve the plantation and life there. The drama unfolds during the transition from slavery to freedom in Jamaica and is an adaptation of Caribbean British writer, Andrea Levy’s fifth novel.

The novel won Levy the Walter Scott award and was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

Other main characters in the drama

The other main characters in the film are July’s mother, Kitty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), who is a stoic field slave and her father, who is the brutal Scottish overseer of the plantation, Tam Dewar (Gorden Brown), who regularly rapes Kitty.

As a young girl, July, who works as a house slave at the plantation, is callously taken from her mother at the whim of Caroline, the sister of the plantation owner, John Howarth (Leo Bill). Caroline wants July for a lady’s maid and decides to call her a more genteel name, Marguerite. July manages to maintain her confidence and good humour as she grows up catering to Caroline’s impulses.

Though often at Caroline’s side, July also has the company of the canny Godfrey (Sir Lenny Henry), the spiteful Molly (Ayesha Antoine), and the haughty Clara (Madeleine Mantock). There is also the debonaire Nimrod (Jordan Bolger), who has bought his freedom and fancies July, promising her a fairy-tale life with him.

Plot thickens with the Christmas Rebellion of 1831

A moment of truth arrives with the Christmas Rebellion of 1831 (also called The Baptist War), a slave uprising that heralds the end of official slavery in Jamaica and other English colonies but at a great cost in lives, including some who are near and dear to July.

The British Parliament gave its colonies the option to make true emancipation a gradual process. In Jamaica, a transition from slavery to “apprenticeship” came into effect in 1834.

It is in the aftermath of the rebellion and during the period known as apprenticeship that a handsome new overseer, Robert Goodwin (Lowden), rides into the story. He will establish an enlightened approach to working with the emancipated slaves, set more than one heart aflutter, and play a tragic role in the fates of all.

Rave reviews from British media

Back in 2018, the British press applauded the UK broadcast of The Long Song, which is one of the few productions to focus on British slavery. The Guardian called it “a beautiful, moving, horrifying adaptation of Levy’s unsimple tale that honours the source and its subject”.

The Radio Times judged it “so finely-tuned and carefully-balanced that it’ll break your heart–and make you laugh at the same time”. While The Times wrote, “What can a period slavery drama tell us that we don’t already know? Quite a bit.”