Enslaved

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.

After promising so much with an obviously large budget, great production and, of course SLJ, this show rapidly revealed itself as a 'product of 2020'. I'd suggest that most viewers were already aware of the horrors of the African slave trade and were expecting insight and historical fact. Instead, they were served up large portions of conjecture alongside some badly constructed narratives that seemed to have served only to justify the very expensive diving expeditions. Add in the bizarrely staged / dubbed conversations, and the end result is an unwatchable, virtue-signalling mess, devoid of historical accuracy and authenticity. What a shame and a complete missed opportunity.

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.

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)