The moment a black British film or TV drama is screened, it enters into an informal relationship between the production, those who critique it, and its black audience.
Steve McQueen’s landmark BBC anthology series Small Axe, which over five weeks and five films explored the experiences of London’s Caribbean community across the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, throws this relationship into stark relief.
In viewing Mangrove, the first film in the series, I thought about the time I spent as an 11-year-old at the home of Frank Crichlow, the black community activist and owner of the Mangrove restaurant. His brutal experiences at the hands of the Metropolitan Police, and the subsequent Mangrove Nine trial at the Old Bailey, take up the dramatic centre of the film.
At that point I knew…