Daily Mail, Thursday, March 5, 2020^ Page 17
A brave
new look at
Britain?
No, I fear
it’s a recipe
for division
A
s dystopian portraits
of Britain go, few can be
more arresting. imagine
a world where black
people are the oppressors
and whites are a downtrodden
underclass; where being Cauca-
sian is enough to consign you to
an inferior life without hope.
‘albion’, as this fictional country is called,
was colonised by an african empire 700
years ago and is now a vassal state.
that is the apartheid fantasy conjured
up in the BBC’s new blockbuster drama
series, noughts + Crosses, which starts
tonight and can be watched in its entirety
on iplayer after the first episode is aired.
as a mixed-race man, i was certainly
intrigued by what i assumed would be a
well-meaning attempt to encourage
vi e w e r s t o q u e s t i o n t h e n o t i o n o f
unconscious prejudice. of course, any pro-
gramme that challenges us to think more
carefully about race — just as the Hand-
maid’s tale spawned a global discussion
about gender roles — is to be celebrated.
But as soon as i started watching the
first episode, it became clear it was less a
tV show than a political statement. in
places, at its worst, noughts + Crosses
stoops to naked race-baiting, stirring up
antipathy under the pretence of attacking
racist attitudes.
and that’s a great shame, because it has
a superb cast who make us care about the
characters even when the situations are
contrived and ludicrous.
at its heart is a Romeo and Juliet love
story that i think will captivate viewers,
played out between two young actors who
look fantastic together.
the six-part series is based on five best-
selling novels by former Children’s
Laureate Malorie Blackman.
the first, noughts & Crosses, appeared
in 2001 and was partly inspired by the
murder in 1993 of black teenager stephen
Lawrence by racist thugs in London.
the books are written for ‘young adults’,
an audience that has grown out of Harry
potter and is ready for ‘serious issues.. .’T
He teenage lovers here are
sephy (Masali Baduza), the
daughter of the Home secretary,
and her childhood friend Callum,
the son of her family’s white housekeeper
(Helen Baxendale). Callum (Jack Rowan)
is about to join the army. sephy is
preparing to go to university, where she
wants to study politics. Both are starting
to find out who they are, now that
childhood is ending.
at a party for sephy’s mother’s birthday,
where Callum is expected to serve
champagne to guests, he cuts his finger.
sephy helps bandage it. their eyes meet.
their hearts beat with an audible twang.
and then sephy’s boyfriend Lekan appears
and steers her away. their love is forbidden
before it is even conscious.
in this world, black girls can never fall in
love with white boys, because of the gulf in
status. Blacks are Crosses, whites are
noughts and the two are not the same.
even the most liberal black politicians
and professors believe white people are
sub-human. the all-black police treat
white youths as vermin and the black-
dominated media backs them up.Tangled love affair: Sephy
(Masali Baduza) and
Callum (Jack Rowan)
in Noughts + Crossesby Calvin
Robinson
it’s an interesting set-up and
as a teacher in a north London
school i would certainly encourage
young teenagers to try reading the
books. But there’s always a
da n g e r w h e n a d u l t s t r y t o
appropriate material that was
never meant for a grown-up
audience — and the BBC blunders
straight into that trap.
they’ve turned a love story, set
against a dystopian background,
into an earnest political diatribe.
the result is cringeworthy.
on tV, noughts + Crosses
becomes a crude parallel that
equates modern Britain withracist south africa in the 1970s —
where, in a reversal of roles, black
police can kill white youths just
because they feel like it, and claim
they were acting in self-defence.
i n a n u n s u b t l e j i b e a t
contemporary policing, stop-and-
search is portrayed as akin to
state-sponsored murder. this is a
d e l i b e r a t e l y d i s h o n e s t a n d
incendiary misrepresentation of
law and order today.
all the evidence shows that,
used properly in the real world,
stop-and-search is an effectivedeterrent against knife crime and
other violent offences. it discour-
ages youths from carrying knives
and machetes. only a broadcaster
without a clue about real race
issues in London could suggest
that the real Metropolitan police
are behaving like south african
snatch squads under apartheid.
But doesn’t that typify the BBC’s
outlook today? Competing to be
‘woke-ier than thou’, writers and
executives think the race issues
faced by black Britons are no
different to those confronted byblack citizens in apartheid-era
south africa.
instead of taking the love story
of sephy and Callum, and weaving
it into a nuanced tapestry of racial
inequalities and hidden obstacles,
they’ve painted a crude cartoon.
all this will do is polarise view-
ers, encourage divisiveness and
drown out the real debate.
of course there are serious issues
in this country, stemming from
multiculturalism, immigration
and nationalism. i know a lot
about them. But i didn’t see anyof these real problems reflected in
noughts + Crosses.
indeed in parts, the drama was
so ridiculous that i burst out
laughing. at the aforementioned
birthday party, the white waiters
looked utterly humiliated, like
whipped animals, barely able to
raise their eyes. the black guests
shouted orders at them with
comic-book arrogance.
that picture makes no more
sense with the colours reversed.
Lots of young people from all
racial backgrounds and across the
class spectrum work as waiters or
bar staff. there’s no shame in it —
quite the opposite.
in fact, the idea that white, work-
ing class men are inherently racist
and violent was so ingrained in the
writers’ minds that they couldn’t
help referencing it. even though
the drama is premised on the fact
that it is black people who promote
a racist hierarchy, at one point a
rabble-rousing nazi tries to incite
youths into launching a white
supremacist rebellion.P
RediCtaBLy a thing
that can’t be broadcast
in the real world was
a l s o m i s s i n g : a n y
positive reference to the British
empire. among the cultural elite
in real life, any suggestion that the
empire brought benefits around
the world, such as railways,
education and the abolition of
slavery, is considered a sign you’re
a racist.
indeed, noughts + Crosses
alludes to this, by having the
ruling class prepare a grotesque
‘celebration of excellence’ to mark
centuries of african empire.
drama that preaches will always
fail. But that doesn’t mean televi-
sion can’t address race and class.
When i was growing up, my
favourite show was Red dwarf —
set on a spaceship adrift in the
outer reaches of the galaxy.
one of the characters, dave
Lister (played by Craig Charles),
was mixed-race. another, Rimmer,
was a hologram of a middle-class
man (Chris Barrie).
i can’t remember one overt refer-
ence to their different racial back-
grounds, or even to the chasm
between them in class. the com-
edy was all about their incompati-
ble personalities, not their skin
colour. they just couldn’t stand
each other, and they were stuck
together for eternity.
they were real people, the com-
plete opposite of heavy-handed
symbols of race or class — some-
thing that was sadly missing in
noughts + Crosses.A bold BBC drama imagines an
‘Albion’ in which a black ruling class
subjugates whites. So why does this
teacher have deep reservations...
Picture:MaMMoTh screen/Ilze KIT shoff