The subject matter hasn’t lost its raw power. “Underground Railroad” uses the changing locales to look at manifestations of racism throughout US history, from experimentation on Black people to terrible acts of violence against African-American communities, particularly once they began to reach for the American dream. The most jarring turn comes when Cora and her companion Caesar (Aaron Pierre) reach South Carolina, which ostensibly welcomes Black residents, yet whose means of exercising White supremacy and control gradually reveals itself. The off-kilter nature of that takes a little getting used to, putting the project somewhere between more conventional looks at this era (see “Underground”) and macabre, horror-tinged explorations in “Lovecraft Country” and Amazon’s recent “Them.” Fleeing slavery in Georgia, she travels through different states, each dealing with race by employing different but uniformly horrifying methods. Whitehead’s book tinkers with history in a variety of ways – perhaps foremost by making the Underground Railroad a literal mode of transportation and escape – while offering a naturally episodic approach to the ordeal of its protagonist, Cora (South African actor Thuso Mbedu). But the emotional wallop delivered by Amazon’s beautifully rendered limited series is somewhat offset by the journey’s length, stretching about six terrific hours’ worth of TV over a 10-hour format. “The Underground Railroad” has an almost dreamlike quality, exploring an alternate history of the antebellum South that filters Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book through “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins’ lens.

The underground railroad novel