channel4.com - ORIGINATION

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70 Years of Black TV Drama in Britain

Writer: Stephen Bourne

1970 and Beyond – Channel 4 & BBC2

Black representation in 1970s British TV was dominated by a succession of terrible sitcoms and glossy American imports with only a few exceptions. Important British TV dramas included Michael Abbensetts' Black Christmas (BBC 1977) and writer/director Horace Ove's A Hole in Babylon (BBC 1979). In the 1980s Ove heralded the arrival of Channel 4, Britain's fourth TV channel, as something that 'made a difference for us because of its policy of doing more interesting and experimental television. Before that, I felt that British television was becoming increasingly flat and that the whole nation was watching programmes like Dallas and Neighbours. Channel 4 helped to change that atmosphere.'

Adrian Lester
Adrian Lester as Danny in BBC2's drama, Storm Damage, written by Lennie James
BBC Photo Library
From its launch in 1982, Channel 4 took the lead in showcasing Black talent in front of, and behind, the camera. They commissioned original work from Black writers like Caryl Phillips (The Record, 1984), Mustapha Matura (Nice, 1984), Michael Abbensetts (Big George is Dead, 1987), Tunde Ikoli (Elphida, 1987) and Ngozi Unwurah (Flight of the Swan, 1994); Caryl Phillips adapted his novel The Final Passage as a major two-part drama in 1996; and films from the Black Film Workshops, such as Sankofa's The Passion of Remembrance (1986) and Martina Attille's Dreaming Rivers (1988), had their TV premieres on Channel 4.

On BBC2, Storm Damage (2000) came from the childhood memories of its writer, Lennie James. A hard-hitting drama with fine performances from Adrian Lester, Mona Hammond and T-Bone Wilson, it proved to be the best film or TV drama written about the displacement and alienation of Britain's Black working-class youth since Horace Ove's 1975 feature film Pressure. For his play, Lennie James won the Royal Television Society award for Best Television Drama. However, as Pearl Connor once said, 'In Britain there is no record of the contribution we have made to the performing arts. There is no memory in Britain for us. There is a hole in the ground, and we fall into it.'

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