Jackson tracks the journeys of the men and women trafficked by ships that delivered them into slavery – or often a watery grave
This year has seen a proliferation of freshly commissioned shows examining racism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Enslaved (BBC Two, Sunday), however, predates the death of George Floyd, and would surely have been prominently screened regardless of this year’s events. After all, it has a bona-fide superstar presenter in Samuel L Jackson, alongside Afua Hirsch of the Guardian and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici.
Clearly aware that there have already been numerous slavery documentaries, this four-part series seeks to tell a different story by uncovering new evidence. Full of wide, breathtaking aerial shots of the rivers and coastline of west and central Africa, where the slave trade flourished, it tracks the slave ships’ journeys from Africa to Brazil, the US, the Caribbean or, says Jackson, “the bottom of the ocean”. Up to 1,000 slave ships are thought to have ended up as wrecks. Using new diving technology to locate and examine some of these sunken ships, the series aims to offer a fresh perspective.
