An adaptation of Octavia Butler’s 1979 classic novel comes to FX with relatives.
First published in 1979, the best-selling novel by sci-fi author Octavia Butler relatives defies conventional genres, featuring classic time travel, Antebellum South slave tales, and historical fiction. Butler himself described it as “a kind of grim fantasy.” More than 40 years later, relatives is now an eight-episode TV miniseries, coming to Hulu next month, and we now have our first look via a 90-second teaser.
(Spoilers for the 1979 novel below.)
Butler’s novel is told from the first person perspective of a young black writer named Dana, who moves to Los Angeles in 1976 with her husband Kevin. On her 26th birthday, Dana suddenly becomes dizzy and the walls of their LA home fade. She finds herself on the edge of a forest by a river and promptly rescues a young, red-haired boy named Rufus Weylin. A new dizzy spell quickly brings her back to her present, but the attacks keep coming, and soon Dana is regularly transported back and forth, for varying lengths of time. (Time passes more quickly in the past, further complicating matters.) She quickly learns that there are certain compromises she must make and atrocities she must endure in order to navigate the antebellum South. Eventually Kevin is also transported back to the same period and as a white man he must learn to navigate through the South of the pre-war period.
While no cause or mechanism is ever offered for Dana’s time travel, we eventually learn that there is a historical connection: young Rufus is actually Dana’s ancestor. Her travels back in time initially take place when the accident-prone boy must be rescued – and, understandably invested in preserving her family lineage and future existence, Dana repeatedly saves his life. But as Rufus gets older, things get more complicated. He succeeds his father as master of the plantation and eventually rapes his childhood friend Alice (born free but later sold into slavery) and forces her to become his concubine. One of their children is Dana’s ancestor, Hagar.
YouTube/FX
relatives sold over 1 million copies after it was published; it is a complicated, multi-themed novel and arguably Butler’s most influential and acclaimed work. There was an adaptation of a graphic novel from 2017, but for some reason it was never adapted for film or television – until now. FX ordered a pilot for the miniseries last July and chose relatives ready for a full run in January. According to the official logline, “As Dana, a young black woman and aspiring writer, begins to settle in her new home, she finds herself being pulled back and forth in time, turning up on a nineteenth-century plantation and confronting enters into secrets she never knew ran through her blood.”
Newcomer Mallori Johnson (we crashed) stars as Dana, with Micah Stock (Deke Slayton in the good stuff series) as Kevin. Ryan Kwanten (real blood) plays Thomas Weylin; Gayle Rankin (Sheila the Wolf in Glow) plays his wife, Margaret Weylin; and David Alexander Kaplan (“12” in Weird stuff S4) plays the young Rufus. It seems FX/Hulu is sticking to late 70s Los Angeles for Dana and Kevin’s “current” existence.
I reread relatives every few years or so, and I’m generally pretty open to a few creative liberties when adapting novels for TV. But to be honest, I’m not particularly excited about this teaser, which makes the series look like some downright time travel horror, like they American Horror Story: Antebellum. Admittedly, there are horrific elements in Butler’s novel (although she deliberately toned down the horrific violence in the historical records she studied to attract more readers). But it’s definitely not a horror novel, so it’s… interesting approach for the first teaser.
That said, I have to trust that the series will be well done and rewarding, as the showrunner is award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (a producer on guards and Out of range), in collaboration with fellow producers Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, the wrestler), Joe Weisberg (The Americans), and Joel Fields (Fosse/Verdon). Perhaps the full trailer, when it drops, will give us a better idea of the series’ true tone and scope.
All eight episodes of relatives start streaming on Hulu on December 13. We’ll look.
List image by YouTube/FX
