Get Millie Black - Press Pack
Category: Press PackIntroduction by Marlon James, Creator
“Don’t go to that neighbourhood next week. Something is going to happen.”
Before there was Millie Black, there was Detective Inspector Shirley Dillon-James, blazing a trail where there was none, and making her name by reading clues, not about what happened, but what was going to happen. My mother became famous for using book and street smarts to stop crime before it occurred by picking up on those clues that made it inevitable. You could spend most of your life figuring out such a person, and I failed while trying—but I did find inspiration for our lead.
In the pilot, you’ll meet Inspector Millie-Jean Black, Scotland Yard’s brightest star, who now suddenly throws herself back in her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica working Missing Persons most because of one person missing and presumed dead turned out to be alive. The Jamaica we immerse ourselves in across this series is not sand, sea and sex, but a bolder, darker version of the country never seen on screen. The Jamaica my mother kicked around in. A dark as night noir set in Jamaican technicolour.
Putting my home country centre stage, it was crucial to have world-class Jamaican talent both in front and behind the camera, while also offering an unflinching perspective on our vibrant queer community. Across the first season, a single case will lead our heroine on a roller coaster ride into the centre of an international human trafficking ring. It’s about the long legacy of slavery, and colonialism, but also childhood trauma, cycles of abuse, and what happens when the demons of your past gang up to make a last stand against you.
What really drives the story, what leads us to its explosive end, is Millie herself. Her background, her trauma, her upbringing, her mother, her sister, her life as a black woman in the UK, as a cop at Scotland Yard, and detective in Jamaica, as a person dealing with self-destructive impulses that bleed into her life and work as she and her country come to grips with a past that’s never really past.
For her (and for me) this time it’s personal.
Cast and crew
Tamara Lawrance – Millie Black
Joe Dempsie – Luke Holborn
Gershwyn Eustache Jnr – Curtis
Chyna Mcqueen – Hibiscus
Marlon James – Writer and Executive Producer
Jami O’brien - Executive Producer
Leopoldo Gout - Executive Producer
Simon Maxwell - Executive Producer
Tanya Hamilton - Lead Director And Co-Executive Producer
Joshua St Johnston - Co-Executive Producer
Music by Carly Paradis
