"Everything that happens in this country [the US] and in this culture can be traced back to the racial divide and the enslavement of people of colour. Unless and until we really come to terms with the damage done by that – and the resistance to sharing power with those who literally built this country – it will be difficult, if not impossible, for us ever to move forward."

Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family traced his family lineage back to Kunta Kinte, an African tribesman captured in the Gambia and sold into slavery in America. It sold millions, won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a 12-hour, eight-part miniseries in 1977, the final episode of which was watched by a staggering 100 million people (a record that still stands) – a figure even more staggering when you consider the entire population of the US at the time was about 220 million.

For many in America – and elsewhere – it was the first time the grim realities of the slave trade had been given dramatic form. The success of Roots could have served as a starting point for a discussion about how to deal with that shameful past, but instead the moment was lost as debate flared about how much of Alex Haley's book was fact and how much fiction, and how much he might have plagiarised (enough, he admitted, to settle the case with a massive payout).

It was a missed opportunity, but 40 years on the need for such a discussion is even greater as the racial divide in America becomes ever more deeply, and bloodily, entrenched, with police shootings of black men commonplace and revenge shootings of police on the rise.

Roots, says Burton, is "about who we are and where we come from, for both black and white Americans. Only by embracing who we are and what our past is can we look one another in the eye and combine our efforts to forge a peaceful future."

Failure to do that, he says, might yet undo all the good things America stands for.

"This is a pretty perilous time right now," he says. "The worst-case scenario is that the issues of race and class and the gulf between the haves and have-nots in this society will be irreparable to the point of another revolution of some sort. But still I'm optimistic. I genuinely believe that in spite of all evidence to the contrary good will win the day."

Fair enough. But if Roots really is as relevant today as it was in 1977, why not simply re-screen the original?

LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte in the 1977 version of Roots.

That was, in fact, Burton's own response when he first heard about the project – that and a sense of outrage that someone would have the temerity to even try. But once he heard producer Mark Wolper's reasoning, he changed his view.

Wolper's father David had produced the original, and his deal with Warner's meant the rights had passed from father to son (a strangely fitting fate for a story about family legacy). But when Wolper junior showed the original to his own kids, they were distinctly unimpressed – not by the tale, but by the telling. The overlit studio sets, the costumes, the pace, the style of acting all seemed to belong to a different time – the '70s, not the 1700s.

"They watched all 12 hours," Burton relates, "but it was a painful experience."

Phillip Noyce, the Australian director of the first episode, knows exactly how they felt.

"If you look at it now, it feels quite dated," he says of the original. "There were a lot of inaccuracies we wanted to correct, and if Mark Wolper's son makes another version in 40 years' time I'm sure they'll be saying exactly the same thing about ours."

Australian Phillip Noyce directs the first episode.

On the upside, the first series triggered an avalanche of research on the origins of America's black population and Noyce had access to much of it. "If I had any query, someone from History [Channel] would immediately contact someone. I had professors on set all the time."

The first half hour or so of Noyce's episode establishes the life and culture of Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby) in western Africa in the early 18th century. The rest of the episode focuses on the Middle Passage – the journey aboard the slave ships from Africa to America – and Kunta Kinte's experiences of slavery in Virginia.

Anyone who saw the original will recognise the storylines – Kunta Kinte's whipping, his daughter Kizzy's rape, her son Chicken George's slow journey to freedom – but there's a directness and energy about this version that makes it feel very now. The violence of that whipping scene, for instance, is on a par with that in 12 Years a Slave; the racism seems to leap straight from Django Unchained. It feels fresh and alive and, sadly, all too familiar.

Tom Lea (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Chicken George (Rege-Jean Page) in episode 4.

Understandably, the producers had originally aimed to have all four episodes directed by African-Americans. But, says Noyce, "They're all too busy! With all the #oscarssowhite controversy and so on, things are changing a little."

Fellow white Australian Bruce Beresford, and African-Americans Mario Van Peebles (son of Melvin Van Peebles, whose 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Badaasssss Song is considered a watershed moment for the emergence of black cinema) and Thomas Carter direct the other three episodes. Both Australians have experience with race as an issue in their work – Beresford having helmed the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and the indigenous-themed The Fringe Dwellers (1986), Noyce having made Backroads (1977) and Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002).

For Noyce, there's plenty of relevance in Roots for an Australian audience. "It's a great story and it really does help Australians understand the undercurrents that still run hot through American society – the dislocation of families and family units produced by a slave system where people were chattels, mothers separated from children, siblings separated both in Africa and in America.

"That dislocation was also part of our policies in Australia," he adds. "And it's taken a long time to not recover from it in both America and Australia. If you strike at the heart of family connections you really do take away a person's identity. If they don't know who they are, they're lost.

"That kind of agony of lack of identity can go on for a long, long time."

WHAT Roots

WHEN SBS, Wednesday July 27, 8.30pm

Follow Karl Quinn on Facebook and on twitter @karlkwin