NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (June 2024): Criterion have transferred Barry Jenkins 's The Underground Railroad to Blu-ray. It is cited as being from a "4K digital master, approved by cowriter-director Barry Jenkins, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack". Firstly what a beautiful film series filled with indelible visuals - all shot in digital - Arri Alexa etc.. There are ten episodes in total mostly an hour long shown in 1.78:1 with three of the chapters in 2.39:1; four (The Great Spirit running 40-minutes), seven (Fanny Briggs running 20-minutes) and ten (Mabel.) It looks about as pristine as you might anticipate being a modern production with kudos to cinematographer James Laxton (Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight) and the art direction by Richard L. Johnson, Paul D. Kelly and Robert Pyzocha. The HD presentation is flawless over four dual-layered Blu-ray discs with very high bitrates. Visually this is engrossing. 

NOTE: We have added 78 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Criterion offer a robust Dolby Atmos surround track or a linear PCM stereo track (24-bit) - both in the original English language. The Underground Railroad has keen separations that come through subtle to aggressive movement to the rear speakers. There is depth and effective buoyancy. The music was by pianist Nicholas Britell (triple Oscar nominated) who also did the scores for Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight, as well as Adam McKay's The Big Short and many more films. It carries a range of emotion from somber and contemplative to dynamically aggressive, hopeful and provocative. It is a stunningly beautiful score throughout the series. Britell is a premium modern film composter. Criterion offer a lossy English descriptive audio option and English (SDH) subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-rays.

NOTE: For Atmos - many non-compliant systems will recognizes it as TrueHD 7.1 From Wikipedia: "The substream is added to Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus. This substream only represents a losslessly encoded fully object-based mix. This substream does not include all 128 objects separated. This is not a matrix-encoded channel, but a spatially-encoded digital channel. Atmos in home theaters can support 24.1.10 channel, but it is not an object-based real-time rendering. Filmmakers need to remix and render the TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks with Dolby Media Producer."

The Criterion Blu-ray offers a lot of involvement from cowriter-director Barry Jenkins staring with a new commentary by Jenkins and on select chapters with cinematographer James Laxton and lead editor Joi McMillon, with an introduction by the director entitled "The Commentary Hub" were Barry Jenkins states that they recorded the commentary in the order that they filmed The Underground Railroad, and not the chronology of the show feeling that is a more honest story of the show's inception. So, if you do listen to the commentary he encourages to be in the order of episodes 2 - South Carolina, 1 - Georgia, followed by 10 - Mabel, 8 - Indiana Autumn, 9 - Indiana Winter, 3 - North Carolina, 7 - Fanny Briggs, 5 - Tennessee - Exodus, 6 - Tennessee - Proverbs, and, lastly, 4 - The Great Spirit. Jenkins is fabulous articulating production details only privy to the director with interesting specifics about cast, filming etc. He's wonderful to listen to. I did bounce around in the order suggested and did see the value of the evolution of the filmmaking to be key to appreciating the production decisions and hurdles overcome. Included in the supplements is The Gaze, a 52-minute companion piece showing the series characters by Jenkins which is a non-narrative film inspired by the paintings of Kerry James Marshall. It is beautiful with poignant music by Britell. Other extras include a new 28-page graphic-novel adaptation of “Genesis,” an unfilmed chapter of The Underground Railroad written by Jenkins and Nathan C. Parker, drawn by Valentine De Landro, with an introduction by Jenkins. On the discs there are, deleted scenes, with a statement by Jenkins, seven teasers made by Jenkins, with a new introduction by the director and Building “The Underground Railroad,” a short program featuring Jenkins and production designer Mark Friedberg discussing the creation of the train-station sets. The package has liner notes with an essay by critic Angelica Jade Bastién. I greatly appreciated the director's participation in these supplements and his prefacing to the specific extras.

Barry Jenkins' The Underground Railroad is both riveting and... fascinating. I 'binged' through it without pause and was blown away by the story and visuals. The more I watch the director's Medicine for Melancholy the more I appreciate it. I fully intend on indulging in his Moonlight in 4K UHD. The alt-history fantasy element (labeled as "magic realism") uses an actual subterranean train, with engineers, conductors, tracks etc. as a physical transport to freedom where the historical 'Underground Railroad', as we learned in school, was only a metaphor - it was actually a network of hidden routes, and safe houses with abolitionist's support to assist African-Americans escape North from slavery. The Underground Railroad series was based on Colson Whitehead's 2016 novel which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The series chapters shift to different character perspectives. It is brilliantly realized. The four disc Criterion Blu-ray package with commentary and extensive director participations gets our highest recommendation. I can see this being selected in our year-end poll.

Gary Tooze