It’s a tempting speculation. What if the television miniseries “Washington Black” had been adapted to the screen by Ryan Coogler or, say, Steve McQueen, with a hefty budget and HBO production?
Certainly, “Washington Black” has no shortage of complex themes for filmmakers and studios with lofty dramatic ambitions and high production values to feed on. Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Ghanian-Canandian writer, Esi Edugyan, “Washington Black” chronicles the fictional odyssey of an enslaved Black child in the antebellum 1800s who escapes captivity, matures into a brilliant inventor, and scales both continents and monumental scientific discoveries to reclaim his identity. The series delves into the transatlantic slave trade and the underground railroad and flirts with African repatriation. It depicts Black genius that is exploited by racist appropriation, and examines interracial marriage, and the implications of self reinvention. Along the way there’s also sex, murder, suicide, and betrayal. And if the racial politics and critique of historical narratives weren’t weighty enough, Nat Turner is on hand to make a compelling case for Black liberation via mass homicide.
By the time Edugyan’s bold themes have reached actual Hulu audiences, however, “Washington Black’s” Homeric grandeur and full dramatic potential have been thoroughly Disney-fied. Instead of a slave trade epic marked by revelatory turns of alternative history, we get an after-school special channeling Jules Verne, “Roots,” and “Forrest Gump.”
WASHINGTON BLACK – “J’ouvert Morning” – Wash urges Medwin to fight for love then joins Tanna and Goff in London. At the Royal Science League, betrayals surface, and a reunion at the Wilde estate unveils a powerful truth about Wash’s past. (Disney/Chris Reardon) SHARON DUNCAN-BREWSTER, STERLING K. BROWN 
WASHINGTON BLACK – “Selamiut” – Pursued by Willard, Wash faces a life-changing decision. As tensions rise between Tanna and McGee, Young Wash must carve his own path on a perilous Arctic journey. (Disney/Chris Reardon) STERLING K. BROWN, IOLA EVANS 
WASHINGTON BLACK – “Selamiut” – Pursued by Willard, Wash faces a life-changing decision. As tensions rise between Tanna and McGee, Young Wash must carve his own path on a perilous Arctic journey. (Disney/James Van Evers) EDDIE KARANJA, ERNEST KINGSLEY JUNIOR
The titular character and protagonist, George Washington “Wash” Black, is played as a boy by Eddie Karanja, an old soul with a permanent wide-eyed gaze, and as an adult by Ernest Kingsley Jr. While the series toggles between adult Wash and the backstory of young Wash, the inter-continental travelogue includes a hot air balloon, a pirate ship and treks across arctic tundras and the Sahara Desert. Kingsley plays the adult Wash with a maddening passivity that often renders him the least charismatic one in the room — and he somehow manages to project little of the worldliness and complexity that his sojourns would have presumably granted him. The action, which makes stops in Barbados, Virginia, Nova Scotia, the Arctic, Morocco, Benin, the Solomon Islands, and even, literally, the clouds, is filmed primarily in locations in Nova Scotia and Mexico. If you want to kick back at home and catch some captivating small-screen cinematography that will at least aspire to, if not match, the scale of the destinations named in the story, you’re in for an unscheduled nap in your La-Z-Boy.
Of course, Wash doesn’t gain the world in order to just lose his soul. He finds love and a kindred spirit in Tanna Goff (lola Evans) – a character with a Brown mother from the Solomon Islands and a white British father – who forgoes a staid, privileged life passing as white to embrace a life of color and adventure with Wash.
Believing himself to be orphaned, Wash is raised by a collective of nurturers and surrogate parents in Big Kit (Shaunette Renée Wilson), Underground Railroad conductor Medwin Harris (Sterling K. Brown), and Wash’s oxymoronic white abolitionist master, Titch Wilde (Tom Elllis), among others. In fact, whether it’s a kind-hearted Inuit couple, loving Black pirates or a seething Nat Turner, every adult Wash meets is seemingly quick to school him or take him under their wing, and Wash is only too eager to soak up their bromides.
Not all the storylines and relationships, notably Wash’s tortured “apprenticeship” with Titch and his connection to Big Kit, receive satisfying treatment, but “Washington Black” is certainly watchable and has its occasional charms, especially if you happen to be a teenager looking for an entry-level tale of Black self-determination. What you won’t find as you globetrot through eight episodes of “Washington Black,” however, is inspiration or genuine wonderment.
Now streaming on Hulu.com.