Roots (1977) [2 of 12]

Episode 2 (8 April 1977) - Kunta Kinte does not enjoy his new status long: slave traders sweeping the countryside seize him. Chained with other captives, Kunta begins an agonized odyssey to the New World.

Roots is an American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, set during and after the era of slavery in the United States. Roots received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which holds the record as the third-highest-rated episode for any type of television series, and the second-most-watched overall series finale in U.S. television history. It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million.

The miniseries was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, John Erman, David Greene and Gilbert Moses. It was produced by Stan Margulies. David L. Wolper was executive producer. The score was composed by Gerald Fried, and Quincy Jones for only the first episode. Many familiar white TV actors, such as Ed Asner (from The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Chuck Connors (The Rifleman), Lorne Greene (Bonanza and later Battlestar Galactica), Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch), and Ralph Waite (The Waltons), were cast against type as slave holders and traders. Television executives "got cold feet" after seeing the brutality depicted in the series and attempted to cut the network's predicted losses by airing the series over eight consecutive nights in January in one fell swoop. It was hugely successful.