In reviewing the premiere of The Underground Railroad, the word “dystopia” came up as a description of the slave state of Georgia—an attempt to apply this powerful fictional designation to the very real nightmare regime of American slavery. In reviewing the second, the word’s opposite, “utopia,” was used to in describe the illusory nature of South Carolina’s genteel “betterment” policies for its Black residents, all of whom still live and thrive only at the pleasure of their patronizing white overlords.

What I didn’t count on is for The Underground Railroad to traffic in out-and-out, alternate-history dystopianism. That’s what Cora finds when the Railroad runs into a roadblock, stranding her in North Carolina. There’s no betterment here. There’s not even slavery. There’s genocide.

I reviewed episode three of The Underground Railroad for Decider.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: When Sir Thomas More coined the term utopia, he did so as a pun. Spelled eutopia, from the Ancient Greek, it means “good place,” which is how the term functions in fantastical literature—utopia as ideal society. But spelled utopia, which is the version More emphasized, it translates rather to “no place.” By definition, then, the ideal society cannot exist.

Griffin, South Carolina seems like a utopia in the eu sense, at least at a glance. By the time The Underground Railroad arrives there for its second episode (“Chapter 2: South Carolina”), our heroes Cora and Caesar have been safely ensconced there for some time. In this semi-integrated town, dominated by its futuristic “skyscraper,” Black people are not enslaved, but free—again, at least at a glance.

I reviewed the second episode of The Underground Railroad for Decider.

Of course, that kind of underground railroad is a fantasy, and that’s the simple genius of novelist Colson Whitehead’s original idea. Why not take the reality and make it a fantasy? Why not concretize the journey of slaves to freedom by creating a locomotive that literally operates underground? Genre stories use fantastical and spectacular ideas and images to communicate powerful ideas and emotions in a visual vocabulary that matches their power. The idea of an actual steam-powered underground railroad—well, it puts the status-quo-smashing “punk” back into “steampunk.”

And by taking on directorial duties for all ten episodes, Jenkins—who also wrote the episode—instantly joins a select company of Academy Award–winning filmmakers helming entire seasons of television, right alongside David Lynch and Steven Soderbergh. If this episode (“Chapter 1: Georgia”) is any indication, Jenkins, like his predecessors, will be making no qualitative distinction between the two cinematic mediums. His camera is calm, cool, and collected, allowing the inhumane drama of the plantation to play out in unsparing long takes. It’s a stylistic choice that makes sense, since so much of that drama is a matter of people being made to bear witness to atrocity. The camera won’t let us look away, either. And when the viewpoint does shift, most memorably letting us—or forcing us to—look through the eyes of the lynched slave as he burns to death, the impact is all the stronger. The surreal, staccato editing of the episode’s opening moments also stand out by comparison.

I’ll be covering Barry Jenkins’s strong new series The Underground Railroad for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.