‘Kindred’ Review: Octavia Butler Comes to the Screen – The New York Times

The biggest change is the introduction of a character, connected closely to Dana, whose presence amps up the emotions in uninteresting ways while muddying the story’s central themes of kinship, guilt and shared responsibility. Another is that instead of being married, Dana and her white partner, Kevin Franklin (Micah Stock), are just beginning to date; rather than watching an established couple’s bond being tested by a horrible and uncontrollable situation, we’re watching a new couple bonding with a disconcerting overlay of romantic-comedy jokiness and ersatz soulfulness. (You could argue that it’s an accurate portrayal of how a young, 21st-century American couple would behave on a 19th-century plantation, but I hope you’d be wrong.)

And then there’s the beefed-up modern-day story line, which adds stereotypical in-your-business relatives (Eisa Davis and Charles Parnell) for Dana and two neighbors (Brooke Bloom and Louis Cancelmi) who are howling caricatures of white paranoia and privilege. In part, it feels like a simple attempt at updating a baby boomer’s novel to a millennial-Gen X time frame and sensibility — the series also weaves in addiction and anti-gay prejudice — but the primary effect is an odd shift in which the most dire threats to Dana and Kevin seem to exist in the present rather than in the violent, disease-ridden, slaveholding past.

That’s not to say that the realities of slavery are never shown or alluded to. But while you see the bondage, oppressiveness and constant threat of violence, you seldom feel them in any powerful way. The Weylin plantation, despite the hysteria of its mistress (Gayle Rankin) and the occasional ruthlessness of its master (Ryan Kwanten), looks like a reasonably convivial and rational place, its dangers mostly confined to abusive language and the occasional slap.

It’s a puzzling choice (and a big departure from the mood of the book) that leaches the tension out of the story. Perhaps it takes into account the tastes of studio executives or potential viewers. Another guess is that the more harrowing aspects of Butler’s story, or whatever is left of it, are being held back for future seasons; the current season ends with one of the book’s more dramatic acts of violence. The adult Rufus, Dana’s primary antagonist in the book, is still in the future.

Kwanten (“True Blood”) is probably the most recognizable member of the low-profile cast, and he makes one of the strongest impressions, though his jovial, mock-courtly take on Tom Weylin is a little incongruous. Dana and Kevin don’t feel very fleshed out, but that may have more to do with the writing than with Johnson’s and Stock’s performances. The liveliest characterization so far is Eisa Davis’s portrayal of Dana’s aunt, a smotherer with a heart of gold.