Written and directed by John Ridley, who won an Oscar as the writer of 12 Years as a Slave, is this fictionalised account of the black activist movement in early 1970s Britain.
I have to add at this juncture something very important about violent activists in Britain or Europe in the 1970s. They were not black or Asian, they were white. In Britain more specifically it was the IRA and its mainland bombing campaign which lasted for over two decades.
The first episode concentrates on a couple who are romantically attached and share the same radical black politics. Marcus (Babou Ceesay) is an unemployed black English teacher. Jas (Freida Pinto) is an Indian nurse who becomes more militant. She plots to free from Wormwood Scrubs a charismatic black leader called Bishop. She also spends time with her ex boyfriend, Kent (Idris Elba) reluctant to get involved in violent protests.
The most vile scenes involve Special Branch Officer Pence (Rory Kinnear) who is involved in the police brutally killing a black activist in a National Front march. We later see Pence sleeping with his black informer lady friend.
Some of the events depicted in the first episode were not too far removed from the BBC drama from 2016, Undercover. It is a surprise to see Sky (owned by Rupert Murdoch) hyping up this drama. If this was shown by the BBC, newspapers such as The Sun (owned by Rupert Murdoch) would had criticised the BBC for being politically correct and displaying the police force in a poor light.
Despite Elba and Ridley attached to the series, I thought the first episode took a while to get going, police violence on black Britons is not new and the episode looked rather cheap with too many close up shots for those outdoor scenes. It actually did not feel like an early 1970s set drama.
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