In the wake of Aretha Franklin’s death in 2018, competing biopics on the Queen of Soul were announced: one coming to movie screens and the other making up the third season of National Geographic’s anthology series “Genius.” Both biopics were delayed by a year because of the global pandemic, and now “Genius: Aretha” is the first release to set the tone for our view of Franklin as a performer, a legend, and a woman.The series starts with a grown Aretha (Cynthia Erivo) arriving at Muscle Shoals to work under acclaimed music producer Jerry Wexler (David Cross).
She’s brought along her husband, Ted White (Malcolm Barrett) and almost immediately the dynamic between the pair is evident.
It also introduces one of the more frustrating things about “Genius: Aretha”: It’s a biography told with a muddled chronology, and this storytelling technique is distracting and confounding.In this
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