The highly-anticipated television event Roots, the four-part, eight-hour series by History channel based on the best-selling novel by Alex Haley is expected to debut this Wednesday at 20:30 hours before repeating next Sunday on Lifetime.
MultiChoice announced in a press statement that it has opened the History Channel to all DStv Compact and Compact Plus Subscribers from June 13 – July 11.
And to go with that is Roots, which was developed by History and produced by A+E Studios. Roots recounts the journey of one family’s will to survive, endure, and ultimately carry on their legacy despite enormous hardship and inhumanity.
“During this four week open-window History will broadcast new and exclusive shows, along with top-rated return titles that Compact subscribers will not have had access to previously,” reads a statement by MultiChoice Africa.
Roots will certainly be eagerly anticipated, both on History and Lifetime.
“Nearly 40 years ago, I had the privilege to be a part of an epic television event that started an important conversation in America,” says LeVar Burton, co-executive producer and the actor who played the lead role of Kunta Kinte in the original 1977 version.
“I am incredibly proud to be a part of this new retelling and start the dialogue again, at a time when it is needed more than ever.”
Spanning multiple generations, the lineage begins with young Kunta Kinte, who is captured in his homeland of The Gambia and sold into slavery. Throughout the series, the family continues to face adversity that reveals powerful truths about the universal resilience of the human spirit.
Starring in the series are Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker (Fiddler) and Anna Paquin (Nancy Holt); Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner Laurence Fishburne (Alex Haley); Golden Globe Award winning and Emmy Award nominated actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Tom Lea); Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose (Kizzy); Grammy Award winner Tip “T.I.” Harris (Cyrus); Emayatzy Corinealdi (Belle); Matthew Goode (Dr William Waller); Mekhi Phifer (Jerusalem); and James Purefoy (John Waller).
The series also introduces Regé-Jean Page (Chicken George) and Malachi Kirby (Kunta Kinte), originally played by LeVar Burton who is co-executive producer in the new Roots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZwaqFhs9fo
Thanks. I have just found the series on my online TV site. Now you have given me something to watch tomorrow while baby sitting my little one.
So now you how George Lwandamina came to be known as Chicken Goerge.
The traducers of our race like to show this series as the beginning of african history. Pity
If your name is a shield, why then do zambian people carry foreign names like kenneth, frederick, levy, rupiah, michael, edgar etc. Who uses an oppressors shield to protect a nation. No wonder we are so destroyed. our shields will never hold against attack as long as we always give our children these foreign names. Show me a prime minister (caucasian) in the UK or president(caucasian) in the USA who had an african name like chileshe, ikemefuna, hambote etc. I hope after many watch this series, some sense of pride in theirselves as africans will be woken up. I hope they will remember who the real enemy is to date. He might have diguised his fighting methods but is still killing black folk. millions of black men incarcerated in the US, africa being given vaccines with hidden drugs in it to…