Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Netflix

One Night in Miami
Amazon Prime

With theatres closed until spring, it’s a boon that leading screen streaming services offer adaptations of two of the most powerful modern American dramas. A further impetus to watch is that both deal with one of the most urgent US political issues – race.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is 10 per cent of one of the mountain ranges of theatre writing. Between 1982 and 2005, August Wilson wrote a cycle of 10 plays, each set in the African-American community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in one decade of the twentieth century. This one is time-stamped 1927, as Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) lays down some new tracks, amid a power struggle with some members of the band.