Washington Black blunts a stunning novel's violence and depth
The adaptation of Esi Edugyan's Giller Prize-winner hits Hulu this week.
Photo: Disney/Lilja Jonsdottir
Like far too many stories about Black characters set during the 19th century, Washington Black begins against the barbaric backdrop of slavery. The emotional scars of one of humanity’s worst atrocities have haunted and lingered for generations, resulting in an exorbitant number of Black-led shows and films rooted in oppression and exploitation. But Hulu’s take on Esi Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning novel offers a rare, winsome depiction of Black life that prioritizes joy over trauma—a seemingly trivial feat that feels radical in its execution—even if the final product amounts to a little less than the sum of its parts.
Adapted by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (The Twilight Zone), who co-showran with Kim Harrison, the eight-part series follows George Washington “Wash” Black, an 11-year-old boy born on a Barbados sugar plantation, where he is raised by an older enslaved woman, Big Kit (Shaunette Renée Wilson). (In two star-making performances, Eddie Karanja plays Wash as a pre-teen, while Ernest Kingsley Jr. portrays the protagonist as a young adult.)
In 1830, Wash’s master, Erasmus Wilde, is visited by his brother, Christopher a.k.a. Titch (Tom Ellis), a well-meaning abolitionist who wants to follow in his father’s footsteps as a scientist. After squandering some people’s investments in the name of science back home in London, Titch has fled to Barbados in order to build and test a “Cloud-cutter,” a flying machine that is best described as a hot-air balloon attached to a gondola. Titch then quickly takes a special interest in the young Wash’s prodigious talents as an artist and scientist. Gradually, Wash becomes a kind of companion to Titch, learning how to read and write from him and accompanying him to the hill where the hydrogen-powered device is being assembled by other slaves. And this recognition of his humanity allows Wash to flourish.
Given that slavery was abolished in Barbados just a few years later, viewers and readers alike would not be faulted for anticipating that Washington examines the final days of involuntary servitude through the impressionable eyes of an enslaved boy. But instead, Washington imagines an alternate world where a Black kid is allowed to live a life shaped by his own acuity. By breaking away from the confines of the conventional historical novel, the story transports readers to a travelogue reminiscent of Jules Verne’s most notable works. After witnessing the suicide of another member of the Wilde family, Wash is forced to flee with Tisch—by Cloud-cutter, no less—and embarks on an epic adventure that spans multiple continents, where Wash encounters a bevy of colorful characters who challenge and reshape his understanding of family, freedom, and love.
As a novelist, Edugyan masterfully waded through the dehumanizing quality of mass atrocity to tell a story about a single, self-directed individual that is large in scale but intimate in scope. Washington is most effective as a character study of a protagonist caught between two worlds: as an enslaved and a freed person, as a young Black man wanting to be himself but living in a racist world, as a brilliant creative thinker whose talents merit the attention of the white elite. The series finds itself caught in a similarly uncomfortable, in-between place: While grounded in real history, the show takes on a fairytale quality, once the story leaves Barbados, that is difficult to translate from page to screen. Despite the old adage that “not all skinfolk are kinfolk” in real life, this story imagines a fanciful notion that those who come from a lineage forged in trauma will look out for each other, no questions asked. But after all, this is a world in which traveling via Cloud-cutter and tracking down long-presumed-dead family members at the ends of the Earth in the 19th century is not only possible but also a common occurrence for Wash.