![]() ![]() Better makeup design allows characters to age realistically. ![]() It employs more accurate (and also consistently delivered) dialects. This new version improves on the original. 2 In an effort to introduce Haley’s “Saga of an American Family” to a new, younger audience, the History Channel recently elected to remake the 1977 miniseries. “The final episode of Roots was seen by more than 100 million people, and is still the third highest-rated TV show of all time, inspiring a sequel miniseries and a Christmas-themed TV movie,” reports the Telegraph. When the 12-hour television series premiered over eight consecutive nights in late January 1977, an estimated one-half of all US television households tuned in. Readers lined up, often for hours, to have their multiple copies-one for themselves and others for relatives, especially children-autographed by the author. ![]() Upon publication, Roots was an immediate best seller, appearing on the New York Times’ nonfiction list for 44 weeks. In Roots, Haley traces his ancestry back to Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka warrior who was captured in present-day Gambia, shipped as cargo across the Atlantic, and forced (along with his immediate descendants) to experience the indignities of American chattel slavery. “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage-to know who we are and where we have come from.” 1 Alex Haley penned these words in an attempt to account for the extraordinary popularity of his 1976 book Roots and its 1977 television miniseries adaptation. ![]()
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