Colson Whitehead, who won Pulitzer Prizes in Fiction in 2017 for "The Underground Railroad" and in 2020 for "The Nickel Boys," has worked with director Barry Jenkins to bring the earlier novel to the small screen. The 10-part series is set to debut on Amazon Prime Video on May 14.
Jenkins, known for his work on the feature films "Moonlight" and "If Beale Street Could Talk," directed all of the "The Underground Railroad" episodes and wrote or co-wrote several as well.
The story, cited by the Pulitzer board as "a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America," depicts the story of enslaved people Cora and Caesar as they navigate a path north. Thuso Mbedu plays the role of Cora; Aaron Pierre has been cast in the role of Caesar.
While all 10 episodes will be released next Friday on Amazon, Variety's Caroline Framke questions the choice, writing in her review: "The series is dense enough that each episode would, and should, stand on their own with enough space for viewers to digest it before moving on to the next."
In a review, Caryn James of the BBC described the show as "a remarkable American epic," writing, "The visible and the invisible, realism and fantasy, meet in this beautiful and searing series."
Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Jenkins, and the two-part video in which he discusses the making of "The Underground Railroad" is below:
To watch the Amazon Prime series when it becomes available on May 14, click here.