I agree "The Tempest" was not up to the level of "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer." But, then, TV series are virtually the only serious form in the medium. They just don't hire playwrights, so 2 hours is never enough.
It was, as you wrote, a waste of a perfectly good, possibly even inspired idea for a juxtaposition. But we're a long way from being able to see the kind of honest treatment of this era you allude to. Rod Sterling discovered a long time ago that realism was a striaghtjacket in the entertainment biz. If you want to say something critical or radical, you are much better off adopting a distancing convention.
"The Tempest" simply attests that even a Shakesperian frame cannot make historical slavery a safe topic for prime time drama. If you want to see that, well, maybe we can put Bart & Lisa in the Wayback Machine, you think?
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"