TV REVIEW : Suspenseful, Historical ‘Race to Freedom’

“Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad” is terrific TV for young viewers unfamiliar with the United States’ pre-Civil War racial history.

And for older audiences familiar with the saga of blacks escaping to Canada and outwitting the clutches of the repugnant 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, this production is as suspenseful, if not as lavish, as historical drama on TV usually gets. (It airs at 8 tonight on two cable outlets--the Family Channel and BET.)

Following in the tradition of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman,” “Race to Freedom” is the story of four slaves fleeing a North Carolina plantation for Canada, the “promised land,” where bounty hunters can’t legally touch them.

Traveling by night on the so-called underground railroad--in essence a network of friendly, above-ground shelters identified by candles burning in the windows--the runaway slaves beat a desperate path to the Ohio River, where they encounter the underground railroad’s real conductor, Harriet Tubman, who puts them on a genuine train for the Canadian border, where more trauma awaits.

Shot in Ontario and co-starring Janet Bailey as a young plantation housekeeper reluctant to face the perils of freedom and Courtney Vance as her gritty fiancee, the movie is tightly directed by Don McBrearty from a compelling teleplay by Diana Braithwaite, Nancy Botkin and Peter Mohan.

Sure, the creators take some romantic license but hardly enough to tarnish the project.

Bailey shines in her growth from docility to heroism, and the movie features flinty supporting performances (among them Dawnn Lewis’ powerfully etched runaway, Glynn Turman’s chilly bounty hunter and executive producer Tim Reid’s Frederick Douglass.

The show resourcefully captures the 1850s with minimal production sophistry, and it’s enriched by Melba Moore’s soaring off-screen vocal motif of “Oh, Freedom.”