Kindred

Kindred is a show that challenges the many assumptions within that answer, presenting a compelling, thought-provoking scenario in a well-written and expertly directed package.

The writing is very smart, illuminating without feeling expository, and an utterly fantastic scenario is made more digestible, if not necessarily believable, because the characters behave the way people would if they found themselves in such a situation.

In all, "Kindred" is a reasonable, economic realization of Butler's classic story grounded by Johnson's naturalistic and potent performance, one whose strengths compensate for the strange lack of chemistry with Stock – who does a fine job, don't get us wrong. ... They work well enough to keep the audience invested in their unexpected journey, even at its most harrowing, as well as buying our interest in the possibility of continuing beyond eight episodes.

FX’s long-awaited Kindred doesn’t quite dazzle in the same way that the very best recent novel-to-TV adaptations have done. ... But this series does, for the most part, do justice to the metaphor at the center of Butler’s masterpiece. That’s another way of saying that you shouldn’t miss it. ... When Kindred really achieves excellence, it’s usually through Johnson’s extraordinary performance.

“Kindred” is a sharp exploration of history, national and personal. ... Johnson makes the character so vivid that the complications around her can at times feel ancillary. It’s in Dana’s relationship with the worlds around her, old and new, that the show feels most alive.

It is a haunting, horrific story, told with nuance, care and excellent timing by creator Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

There is potential for Kindred to go awry if she show’s writers end up concentrating on the wrong side of Dana’s time travel adventure. But it’s definitely an intriguing premise that brings up so many questions that we’ll keep watching to see if they’re answered.

Kindred's first season is thematically rich but narratively sluggish. Yet, like the soap operas Dana adores, it ends on a cliffhanger that makes it hard not to wonder what happens next, and there's enough promise in these episodes to hope the story doesn't end here.

If you enjoy stitching together clues, “Kindred” might keep you hooked long enough to finish the first season.

The side-quest to find her mother never really turns up anything especially revelatory and only adds to the sense that Kindred is spinning its wheels.

Some of the new additions impart welcome dollops of humor but the adaptation falls short when it comes to tapping into the trancelike effect of Butler’s prose. ... The greatest thing the show has going for it is Johnson’s performance.

Kindred never manages to improve after its intriguing pilot, one that promised a compelling mystery and plenty of tense moments. Instead, the focus is on ancillary characters that are not only obnoxious but lifeless as well, and spends the bulk of the story down on the plantation. Ultimately, this is a mystery that I won’t be returning to find out the answers to.

The time jump [from 1976 in the book to the show's 2016] may rankle purists, but it’s hard to imagine that an author as prescient as Butler, who died in 2006, wouldn’t appreciate such an update. ... “Kindred” takes other detours that don’t pay off as well in the first season. ... The series weaves in a thread aligning the 19th-century patrolmen who gleefully round up runaways with modern-day police forces, a comparison Butler explored much more subtly in her book.

The character work, the chemistry between Johnson and Stock, and the sense of creeping dread that comes from her brief journeys to the plantation are all very effective early on — almost too effective. Once the season evolves from toggling back and forth between the two eras and devotes itself to a few extended stays in 1815, Kindred quickly begins to drag, as if it doesn’t want to be in this time and place any more than Dana or Kevin initially do.

Where Butler started with characters and imagined a world around them, the series starts with a received notion of the world and shuffles characters around within it, relying on mystery, melodrama and a smidgen of wry humor for its entirely ordinary effects.

By the time it all comes to an oddly open-ended conclusion, what remains clear is that the most meaningful parts of the series are those that were already done better and with more care in Butler's hands.

It’s a credit to showrunner Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins that the whole thing doesn’t collapse under the weight of its premise. That said, the project does betray the telltale stress marks of trying to make Butler’s complicated book fit a serialized TV framework, relying on cliffhangers to the point of exhaustion.

The decision to shy away from fetishized violence will help viewers with no interest in another stylized depiction of trauma and it probably makes the parallels between 1800s and 2016 more unsettling and relatable, but it lowers the overall stakes in ways that are confusing and a little disappointing.

Butler's clear-eyed themes are watered in this series; her creative vision of time travel is reduced to an unimaginative parlor trick, and her inspired world-building isn't honored. ... Johnson drowns in the feckless writing. Dana isn't a fascinating enigma.