Escravidão: Uma História de Injustiça

This is about a organisation Dwp diving with a purpose who have traced some shipwrecks that they believe may be connected to slave ships that sank, they found objects that say they were used in slavery, they then get upset about a spoon and ivory. They risk their lives diving for these objects but the laws prevent them from recovering bigger objects. The slave trade was brutal and story should be told, but the first and second program are slow and dragged out. The series does get better and the story does show that even black people were involved at point of sale, but as slavery was accepted at the time people who were slaves and educated Americans rose up and help free slaves before the civil war. If you stick with the program it does have some merit, but just not all about begin of slavery, but more about ships and how slaves were packed and died on shipwrecks. The stories in episode three of people escaping slavery and finding freedom was more interesting than story of a shipwrecks.

I was really looking forward to this documentary as the premise seemed really interesting.

The documentary feels disjointed. The historic factual information from the historians with Samuel L Jackson are great. There were things I think are probably widely known but there were lots of these parts that brought context to the scale of slavery. I found these parts engaging and interesting and more than once exclaimed aloud about them. Had the documentary been just these parts, this would be a very different review.

Then we come to the diving parts. These felt jarring. There's interesting, shocking sections with Samuel and Afra at the door of no return and the like. It then basically cuts to the diving team having a seemingly scripted discussion about the perils of diving in the English Channel followed by lots of faux perilous voice over about the technicalities while they bring up an item probably returned to the UK on a slave ship. It honestly felt like someone had changed the channel. This feeling continued through the whole series. The diving part felt unnecessarily technical and unnecessary in general. It didn't tell the stories in the way I had hoped and only really detracted from the non diving sections.

Do yourself a favour and look up documentaries by David Olusoga.

I was left wondering who this was aimed at? On one hand it seemed to gloss over the horrors of this vile occurrence but then seemed bent on entertainment. The episode on emancipation was the most interesting because it told an investigation story but then failed to even mention William Wilberforce ( and if you don't know who he was go look him up)

This is such an important show to have right now! It really taught me a lot and is so interesting, as someone who doesn't watch many documentaries I really enjoyed this show. The dives were so exciting!

This is ok but not as good as you'd expect from its promotion and the involvement of Samuel L Jackson. Some of the cinematography is quite good and it tells some interesting stories. However it's quite dumbed down and feels like one of the American made 'documentaries' you see on the history channel ie light on academic detail/heavy on entertainment. For some reason most of the story is told by a group of divers and a journalist. Fair enough but none of them seem to have any academic or expert background at all. There are some experts but not many. Samuel L Jackson also has very limited involvement. He features quite a lot in the last episode but in the other episodes he's probably there for 5-10mins max, often not saying anything at all.

Overall I feel like in four hours I could have learnt a lot more of what is clearly a very important subject. I don't think this series did the subject justice at all.