Making amends — and a movie — over slave-trading ancestors

TV Lookout |

What if you found out that your Rhode Island ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history?

Spurred by this troubling discovery, Katrina Browne set off on an odyssey to make sense of this outrage and, maybe, to make some small amends.

She also made her first film. "Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North" follows Browne and nine other descendants of Mark Anthony DeWolf as they travel from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back — the infamous Triangle Trade by which the DeWolf family brought some 10,000 African slaves to the Americas (with as many as a half-million of these Africans' descendants alive today).

Airing at 10 p.m. Tuesday on KCTS, "Traces of the Trade" begins the 21st season of "P.O.V.," the Emmy- and Peabody-winning documentary series. "P.O.V." (shorthand for "point of view") will air "Traces" and 14 other films by a wide range of independent filmmakers on a broad scope of topics — from backroom Japanese politics to the legendary Johnny Cash.

Other shows to look out for:

PBS' "Masterpiece" (formerly "Masterpiece Theatre") moves into its weekly mystery phase with a summer of British crime thrillers. The plot thickens at 9 tonight on KCTS with the first of three "Inspector Lewis" films, starring Kevin Whately ("The English Patient") as Det. Inspector Robbie Lewis, a working-class crime-solver teamed up with laid-back, cerebral Det. Superintendent James Hathaway (Laurence Fox, "Gosford Park").

Thereafter, "Masterpiece Mystery!" will feature three weeks of "Foyle's War," two editions of "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries" and two episodes of "Sally Lockhart" set in Victorian England. Host of "Masterpiece Mystery!": stage and film star Alan Cumming.

"We like to take a classic song and crucify it," says Mick, guitarist in the British punk-rock group Heavy Load. Witness their versions of "I Fought the Law" and "Wild Thing." But this band isn't just a latter-day reply to the Ramones. Three of the five members have learning disabilities. Michael, the drummer, has Down syndrome and for 19 years has lived in a social services group home.

They originally got together just for fun. But can Heavy Load make a play for the mainstream, and even record an album? Shot over a span of two years, "Heavy Load: The U.K.'s Only Disabled Punk Band" is described by its filmmaker, Jerry Rothwell, as "a comedy driven by a set of charismatic characters, each with their own conflicting dreams." It airs at 10 p.m. Monday on IFC network.

For richer and poorer: Most Americans feel shut out of what has been called "the new Gilded Age" and are hurting from the economic downturn.

A new CNBC documentary tells of the unprecedented explosion of personal wealth in the United States, as well as the plight of the rest of us, in "Untold Wealth: The Rise of the Super Rich." Reported by David Faber, it premieres at 10 p.m. Thursday.