Famous people with direct links to the slave trade go on journeys around the globe to document their connections to it and examine how it shaped the modern world. In the first episode, actors David Harewood and Hugh Quarshie explore opposite sides of the Atlantic slave trade, which saw an estimated 12 million Africans transported across the ocean and sold into a life of slavery.

Shannon LaNier visits Monticello in Virginia and makes a discovery about the nature of his ancestor Sally Hemings' relationship with Thomas Jefferson, and how he tried to hide the fact he owned slaves while living in France. Trisha Goddard investigates how slaves have been traded across the Indian Ocean for millennia the incredible journey of an 18th-century classical musician who was enslaved twice before finding freedom is also featured.