Dana comes to town expecting a warm welcome from family, but she’s met with the opposite…

Octavia Butler is up there with Ursula K LeGuin and Arthur C Clarke as a writer whose views and writing changed how we saw both fiction and the world around us.

Of her many novels, Kindred is up there in the top three of her best-known works. It was certainly the first of hers that I read and which convinced me that here was a serious thinker and visionary with an unapologetically brutal grip on the truth of the lives of the characters she created.

There are a few things to say about this adaptation before we review this first episode. One of them is that this series does not, according to the writer, Matthew Shire, end with the ending of the book.

Which is to say that they are hoping and expecting to tell the story of Kindred across more than one season.

This approach is interesting and I am happy to be convinced it’s the right approach. A very big part of me wants this novel told concisely across one season, to maintain its punch and to ensure that it’s told in a way which as many people as possible will see. Stretching it to more than one season runs the risks that it’s never finished, that people fall away as it progresses and that it loses the impact it truly has.

I can see how copying the approach of The Handmaid’s Tale adaptation is attractive. I can also see how there are significant episodes within the source material that could really work in their own right if expanded.

However, for me and many others, the story’s treatment of events taking place over years in just a few pages is part of what makes it work.

Like I say, I’m happy to be convinced.

My other reservation is that Kindred is forty years old. That’s not to say it’s aged badly or that it’s no longer relevant. I think it remains as painfully relevant now as when it was first written, as if the world has barely changed.

What I mean is that in those forty years fiction has learned from its greats and Kindred is absolutely one of the greats others have learned from, copied and imitated. I wonder if much of what hits so hard in the novel will therefore fall slightly flatter because of this. A good comparison is Neuromancer by William Gibson which, now, can feel a little flat simply because so many that came after it took its innovations as their own that when you return to it with those in your experience it can feel shorn of its originality.

As if that weren’t enough I’m also slightly worried (and not sure I’m ready yet) for more suffering as entertainment, especially if this is focused on people of colour.

These are my thoughts coming into the first episode.

So how did I find it?

The leads, Mallori Johnson and Micah Stock are great. They bring an inhabited feel to their characters that helps the story feel grounded and plausible (if time travelling trauma can be plausible). The changes to the book are clear and obvious from the beginning, although they become even more substantial by the end of episode one, and there’s clearly work been put in to making them feel coherent.

Dana’s arrival in the LA of today and the plantation of the past are both handled well although I think the fragmentary moments we see of the past feel somehow more convincing than Dana’s family relationship in the present.

That familial relationship felt contrived and, well not quite all there in terms of providing an insight into Dana. She comes across as lost and, honestly, kind of empty.

The subtle portrayal of Kevin’s White privilege in the present day is also, if not missing, certainly glossed over. The level playing field of both characters in the book in terms of education, aims and aspirations isn’t apparent in this opener and so the missing moment when Kevin achieves and Dana doesn’t is also absent. This is a shame.

On its own merits, this opening hour works well. Unlike some shows it isn’t in a rush, isn’t jarringly paced and doesn’t feel the need to do more than introduce us to the world Dana is going to cross through the rest of the show.

It’s shot well with great use of lighting and the music, while never intrusive, knows exactly how to punch the mood.

Verdict: I am quietly impressed and look forward to the rest of the series even if that means I have to put armour around my heart to make sure I can take what’s to come.

Rating? 7 nosey neighbours out of 10

Stewart Hotston