Season 1 – The Long Song on Masterpiece

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Sarah M a beautiful/heartbreaking story, and an important one. a must watch. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 04/13/24 Full Review steve d The acting is great but the story has been told better. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member July's life was hard but it was beautiful. She was far from the saint others have claimed her to be. She believed the lies about people she should have known backward and forward. In reality, there were no white saviors or kind mistresses. Absolute power destroys the souls of those with power and those without it. She believed the lies that the whites told the enslaved about who they were. For this reason, she gave away her first child and sought to have a second with a white overseer. She believed his difference made him kind. He still saw her as less than human. And rather than running with her child, she held on belief in him until the bitter end. The reality is she believes the lies. It was a well-written even better-acted story. I was glad to see the enslaved not willing to be so submissives and willing to please. They were real people with real desires. Well worth the watch. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/09/23 Full Review Audience Member I give it five full stars for the great acting, especially Tamara Lawrance. You can't take your eyes off her. What a wonderful moving performance by Lawrance, unforgettable. Hayley Atwell plays the selfish and shallow mistress with a comedic touch. She also gives a great performance, and the two of them together are a treat to see. And Jack Lowden renders a horrifying portrayal of the weak minded "master." But even aside from that magnificent acting, the story, the other actors, the exotic setting - all contribute to an excellent but saddening show. The evils of slavery are evident throughout. And heartbreaking. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/09/23 Full Review susan j Could have been so great. Whatever happened to the notion that less is more? So many of these furious revisionist period dramas are so shrill and seething with vengeance and rage that the characters are drawn in a completely binary fashion of pure good vs. pure evil--like all those superhero films--which I thought we all understood is FANTASY, not reality. In The Long Song it plays itself out with all white women (and some white men) characterized as vulgar, cruel, mindlessly sadistic, punitive, avaricious, stupid, brutal, fiendish, spoiled, gibbering, petty, neurotic, shrill, brutal, and ridiculously silly--while Black people are characterized as near saints--kind, intelligent, sensitive, compassionate, thoughtful, reflective, grounded, realistic, canny, wise, humorous, nuanced, and multifacted. As said: humankind is not constructed like that. Neither individuals--not groups of people--are All Heroic vs. All Villains. It's not realistic, regarding any race nor any time period in history. Don't most people (aside from professional critics) see how manipulative, artless, and dishonest this kind of show ends up being? Makes me so sad, because realistically rendered history, realistically told stories of whole human beings--who are now as ever, always complex, surprising, fallible, and contradictory--set in any time period are so much more interesting and enriching to watch. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Long Song on Masterpiece — Season 1

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