We’re not talking Stranger Things here. You don’t hungrily wolf it down and then move on to the next thing on your list. It needs to be taken one or two episodes at a time, which is how I’m watching it.

Such is the visceral and emotional power of its most brutal moments (and there are many brutal moments, including a horrible whipping and burning that will linger long in the memory), this may be all you’re able to handle in a single sitting anyway.

You need to absorb The Underground Railroad. You need to allow yourself the time and space to sink into it, and to let it sink into you.

The imagery – ravishingly gorgeous at some points, stomach-churningly harrowing at others – is married to an extraordinary soundscape – crackling fire, chirping crickets, eerie whispers, the chugging and clacking of a train, the sickening crack of a whip. The result is immersive, something to be experienced with the biggest screen and best sound equipment you can lay your hands on.

None of this would count for anything without a compelling story, of course. Whitehead’s book – which, like several of his other works, comfortably blends literary and genre fiction – is an alternate history novel with science fictional elements that turns the story of slavery upside down and inside out.

The real Underground Railroad was figurative: a network of abolitionists, safe houses and hidden routes that helped runaway slaves to escape from the antebellum South. Whitehead reimagined it as a literal subterranean railroad with tracks, trains, drivers, conductors and stations, ranging from dank caverns lit by candle or oil lamp to grand, sprawling structures.

Jenkins, who directed the Oscar-winning Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, faithfully follows the suspenseful plot and spirit of the book, but expands some elements. The miniseries melds the creative visions of Whitehead and Jenkins to brilliant effect.

The protagonist is Cora (Thuso Mbeda, stunningly good), born into slavery on a Georgia plantation, who escapes with another slave named Caesar (Anton Pierre).

They’re relentlessly pursued by vicious slave catcher Ridgeway (a career-best performance by Joel Edgerton), whose sidekick is a black boy called Homer (Chase W Dillon), who Ridgeway has dressed up like a little dandy and treats more like a son than the slave he bought for a few dollars.

Ridgeway bears Cora a grudge: her mother was the only runaway slave he was never able to recapture.

Every episode, or “chapter”, brings Cora, who suffers losses along the way, into a fresh horror. In South Carolina, she and Caesar are transported to an idyllic community with futuristic skyscrapers.

Here, black people are educated, have jobs, wear fine clothes and are apparently treated as equals by whites. Cora and Caesar see a safe, happy life before them – until they discover the real purpose of the place.

Things are even more terrifying at the next stop: an ultra-religious community in North Carolina, where Cora and another slave have to hide in the attic of a sympathetic white couple's home. Here, slavery is illegal. So are black people.

Cora is ferried along the ironically named “Freedom Trail”, a road where the decaying bodies of dozens of black people hang from the trees. The Underground Railroad is a tough, unflinching watch. It demands to be watched, though.

We’re told we’re living through the era of “Peak TV”. With the sheer volume of prestige drama series being turned out every year, we’ve never had it so good.

Well, forget all of that. Jenkins has scaled that peak, filed it down and built a new peak of his own on top of it. The word that comes to mind is “masterpiece”.