--- title: Roots Review: What Critics Said About the 1977 Series description: The original 1977 series—now getting a remake—was a major cultural success, but some critics felt that it oversimplified its source material canonical: https://time.com/4338417/1977-roots-reviews/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-26T12:30:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T17:35:52.976Z article:section: History og:title: What Critics Said About the Original 'Roots' og:description: TIME's critic had serious reservations about the 1977 series og:url: https://time.com/4338417/1977-roots-reviews/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba989d61039db2f6/6988936fa988caf8d46b7e11/roots.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: ROOTS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What Critics Said About the Original 'Roots' twitter:description: TIME's critic had serious reservations about the 1977 series twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba989d61039db2f6/6988936fa988caf8d46b7e11/roots.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Critics Said About the Original _Roots_  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 26, 2016 12:30 PM UTC  LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte in a scene from 1977's 'Roots' LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte in a scene from 1977's 'Roots'ABC / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 26, 2016 12:30 PM UTC The [remake of _Roots_](http://time.com/3842265/roots-remake-television/) coming to TV over the Memorial Day holiday has big shoes to fill, given the impact of the original 1977 miniseries based on Alex Haley’s book: the eight episodes broke viewership records, prompted a national conversation about race and set a new bar for television success. Why wouldn’t television producers want to tell that story anew? On the other hand, the original miniseries wasn’t _all_ a success. Many critics in 1977 found the series deeply flawed. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) Though he was far from the only one to say so—William Granger of the Chicago _Sun-Times_ called it “puerile” and Dorothy Gilliam of the Washington _Post_ highlighted the show’s “negative underpinnings,” while John J. O’Connor of the New York _Times_ noted that it was a “distortion or, at the very least, oversimplification” of the source material—TIME’s critic Richard Schickle had particularly harsh words for the series, labeling it “[_Mandingo_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073349/) for middlebrows.” The problem, he posited, was that slavery was “a crime so monstrous that, like the Holocaust, it is beyond anyone’s ability to re-create in intelligent dramatic terms.” In other words, trying to talk about the issue of the African-American historical experience _and_ make high-quality narrative art at the same time was difficult, if not impossible. [In his view of _Roots_, the result was a bad one](http://time.com/vault/issue/1977-01-24/page/56/): --- > “” --- Nearly 40 years later, some of Schickel’s complaints seem dated: the idea that a slavery story cannot be good without clearly showing that good white people exist is, [though still common](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/-em-12-years-a-slave-em-yet-another-oscar-nominated-white-savior-story/283142/), harder to defend. And the artistic merits of the plot didn’t end up mattering so much, in any case. (TIME’s Dan D’Addario [found](http://time.com/4341417/almost-40-years-later-a-miniseries-returns-to-televisions-roots/) that the remake was “alternately–or simultaneously–jarring and beautiful to look at.”) As Maya Angelou, who had a role in the series, [wrote](http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/01/23/75028433.html?pageNumber=81) for the New York _Times_, the book and the series both gave audiences an experience that wasn’t quite so much artistic as it was introspective. They gave audiences a question to answer, as she put it: “Admitting all that has gone before, admitting our duplicity, our complicity and our greed, what do we, all Americans, do next?” **_Read TIME’s 1977 cover story about_** **Roots,** **_here in the TIME Vault:_** [Why _Roots_ Hit Home](http://time.com/vault/issue/1977-02-14/page/1/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4338417/1977-roots-reviews/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4338417/1977-roots-reviews/"},"headline":"What Critics Said About the Original Roots","datePublished":"2016-05-26T12:30:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T17:35:52.976Z","description":"TIME's critic had serious reservations about the 1977 series","url":"https://time.com/4338417/1977-roots-reviews/","keywords":["Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba989d61039db2f6/6988936fa988caf8d46b7e11/roots.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba989d61039db2f6/6988936fa988caf8d46b7e11/roots.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"ROOTS","caption":"ROOTS","creditText":"ABC / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4338417/1977-roots-reviews/","name":"What Critics Said About the Original Roots"}}]}] ```