WGN America’s Underground is thrilling, provocative, overdue — and right on time

[TMC]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...4ec_story.html

"It’s a terrific idea for a drama series,” says Hank Stuever, "but it works even better as a subliminal backdrop to present-day talk of mass incarceration, unwarranted arrests, police brutality and other disturbing symptoms of modern racism. Whether viewers like it or not, we need more shows like this, not only for their diverse character viewpoints, but also for the way that they can measure who we once were against the challenging realities of who we still are….What Underground does have, to its immediate benefit, is a fast, dirty and necessary sense of life-or-death momentum, which puts it more in the mode of AMC’s The Walking Dead (with perhaps even the faintest flavor of Fox’s melodramatic Empire).” PLUS: Underground tries too hard to be entertaining, the creators figured out how to take the subject seriously even as the show itself is primarily pulp fiction, Underground feels more radical in its subject matter and set of protagonists than its execution, the use of current music is disconcerting, and it’s a historical action thriller that never forgets the story part of history.