{"id":166871,"date":"2021-01-30T18:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-the-long-song-review-pbs-masterpiece-puts-black-characters-first\/"},"modified":"2021-01-30T18:00:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T15:00:52","slug":"watch-the-long-song-review-pbs-masterpiece-puts-black-characters-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-the-long-song-review-pbs-masterpiece-puts-black-characters-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch The Long Song Review: PBS Masterpiece Puts Black Characters First"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3db7a65cf1e\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3db7a65cf1e\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-the-long-song-review-pbs-masterpiece-puts-black-characters-first\/#%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_The_Long_Song_Review_PBS_Masterpiece_Puts_Black_Characters_First%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Watch Online The Long Song Review: PBS Masterpiece Puts Black Characters First&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-the-long-song-review-pbs-masterpiece-puts-black-characters-first\/#%E2%80%9CThe_Long_Song_Review_PBS_Masterpiece_Puts_Black_Characters_First%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;The Long Song Review: PBS Masterpiece Puts Black Characters First&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_The_Long_Song_Review_PBS_Masterpiece_Puts_Black_Characters_First%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Watch Online The Long Song Review: PBS Masterpiece Puts Black Characters First&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CThe_Long_Song_Review_PBS_Masterpiece_Puts_Black_Characters_First%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;The Long Song Review: PBS Masterpiece Puts Black Characters First&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div>\n                        \u201cThe Long Song\u201d knows what an audience might expect from a period drama airing on the BBC, as it did in the UK in 2018, or under the PBS Masterpiece banner, as it will in the US starting on January 31. The camera, helmed with a steady hand by director Mahalia Belo, pans across still life scenes of porcelain curios and rumpled silks in a manse surrounded by gently swaying palm trees. \u201cThe life of a white missus on a Jamaican plantation,\u201d a narrator (Do\u00f1a Croll) intones, \u201cbe surely full of tribulation \u2014 from the scarcity of beef to the want of a fashionable hat.\u201d Within seconds, the piercing screech of that \u201cwhite missus\u201d shatters the idyllic scene, and the acidic streak of sarcasm laden in the narrator\u2019s words comes more clearly into focus. \u201cIf that be the story you want to hear, then be on your way. <em>Go<\/em>,\u201d she says, voice sn<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ing with brittle anger. \u201cBe on your way! For the story I have to tell is quite a different one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That the tragic heroine of this story is Black slave July (Tamara Lawrance) rather than her corseted white mistress \u2014 played by period drama veteran Hayley Atwell, no less \u2014 im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely marks \u201cThe Long Song\u201d as a very different kind of Masterpiece <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a>. Outside of something like Andrew Davies\u2019 2019 \u201cSanditon\u201d adaptation, which cast Crystal Clarke as a Jane Austen character born in the West Indies, there really haven\u2019t been any PBS Masterpiece dramas that spotlight Black characters, let alone have them steer the entire series. \u201cThe Long Song,\u201d an adaptation of Andrea Levy\u2019s 2010 novel, not only centers a very specific Black character and experience, but deliberately dares any skittish viewers expecting something quite different to look away. (That this first Masterpiece series to prominently feature Black people is a slave narrative is unsurprising, and worthy of further examination in and of itself.)<\/p>\n<p>Born into slavery on a sugarcane plantation, July gets taken from her mother as a child simply because the owner\u2019s sister Caroline (Atwell) spots her out in the fields and thinks she\u2019s cute. There are many painful scenes yet to come, but this one is particularly crushing in its simplicity. Her kidnapping, which alters the course of her life and devastates her mother (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), is nothing more than a casual whim from people who have no awareness of their own cruelty. This pattern repeats itself over and over again throughout the series, each time just as wrenching as the last. For instance: Caroline\u2019s insistence on calling July \u201cMarguerite,\u201d the better to fuel her fantasies of being a fancy lady of the manor even in a humid country she doesn\u2019t understand, is a stabbing indignity every time. (Atwell, an actor who typically radiates warmth, does a remarkable job of curdling the atmosphere of every room unlucky enough to have Caroline in it.) Particularly fraught is the heel turn from Robert Goodwin (Jack Lowden), a white Brit who initially sweeps July off her feet with promises of fidelity and fair wages for all the recently freed slaves on the plantation. And yet he sours the second the Black people in his employ stand up for themselves, twisting into a hard, gnarled version of the idealistic man July fell for.<\/p>\n<p>With just three episodes to tell the parallel stories of July, the so-called \u201cChristmas Rebellion\u201d of Jamaican slaves rising against their masters to catastrophic losses, and Robert\u2019s transformation into exactly the kind of violent racist he once decried, \u201cThe Long Song\u201d leans hard on its narration to speed things along and tie it all together. (The series was co-written by Levy and \u201cBecoming Jane\u201d scribe Sarah Williams.) This by and large works fine, with the notable exception of July and Robert\u2019s whirlwind romance. Their relationship is such a crucial backbone for the rest of the narrative, especially as Caroline grows more jealous and July watches in horror as Robert resorts to ever more drastic measures to keep his Black employees effectively enslaved to do his bidding. Its foundation could\u2019ve used a bit more consideration in order for Robert\u2019s inevitable, awful betrayal to land most effectively.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of the final episode, it\u2019s clear that the series\u2019 key uniting element is Lawrance. Playing July from a sly teenager to a young mother to a thoroughly bruised woman, Lawrance commands the screen in every iteration of the character. As befits a slave narrative, July is of course deeply traumatized, enduring and witnessing violence that would be unspeakable if its perpetrators weren\u2019t distinctly bragging at their lavish dinner tables about it. As acted by Lawrance and written by Levy and Williams, however, July is also wry, funny and delightfully rude. She is, despite the best efforts of the white people constantly dismissing her as collateral, a full human worthy of starring in her own story.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe Long Song\u201d premieres Jan. 31 on PBS.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/plain\" class=\"optanon-category-C0004\">\n  !function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {\n    if (f.fbq) return;\n    n = f.fbq = function() {\n      n.callMethod ?\n          n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments);\n    };\n    if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;\n    n.push = n;\n    n.loaded = !0;\n    n.version = '2.0';\n    n.queue = [];\n    t = b.createElement(e);\n    t.async = !0;\n    t.src = v;\n    s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);\n  }(window, document, 'script',\n      'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n  fbq('init', '586935388485447');\n  fbq('init', '315552255725686');\n  fbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. 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