<em>Queen Sugar</em> Deepens Its Complex Family Portrait
Queen Sugar debuted last fall as a drama about the lives of the estranged Bordelon siblings: Charley, Ralph Angel, and Nova return to their home in Louisiana after the death of their father Ernest, an indebted sugar-cane farmer, and are faced with the daunting task of reviving the hundreds of acres of land they’ve inherited. The Ava DuVernay-helmed show, based on the 2014 novel by Natalie Baszile and directed entirely by women, was quick to amass both a highly engaged audience and critical praise, the latter largely for its difficult examination of slavery’s imprint on a complicated black family, deep character development, and superb use of the landscape of the American South.
A pivotal scene of that first season saw the siblings making arrangements for their father’s funeral and bickering about who would
