NBC brought back Heroes as Heroes Reborn. Netflix revisited Full House with Fuller House earlier this year. Remaking, revisiting, and reviving old series has become all the rage in US television, a trend that seemed to spread from the endless sequels spawned by the movie industry.

While it could never match the blockbuster success of the original, the remake’s first episode drew 5.3 million viewers in the US, making it the most successful debut for a miniseries there in almost three years. So it’s no surprise that the History Channel has remade the landmark series in hopes of attracting a new generation of viewers. But the fraught racial history of the United States as portrayed in Roots remains as significant, raw, and pertinent to modern times as ever. Television audiences for individual series have shrunk dramatically since then, with the fragmentation caused by cable and streaming options. Many who watched took the series’ lessons to heart and were inspired to investigate their own family histories.

It became a worldwide sensation, the first TV miniseries to do so. It was, at the time, the most-watched single episode of US television in history (a record broken by the M*A*S*H finale in 1983). The eight-night run culminated in a finale that drew an audience of 36 million households, or about 100 million people. The audience grew as the week progressed. When it first went out on 23 January 1977, something entirely different happened: an incredible 29 million households tuned in.

Roots saga