TV & Radio: Good migrations

Published on Sunday 6 December 2009 11:11

Earlier this year, the BBC's new head of drama hinted that they intended to move away from "bonnet dramas" – adaptations of literary classics, such as Dickens or Austen – and towards a new kind of period drama, focusing on the more recent past. Some worried that this heralded the dumbing down of a great tradition, especially when the first of two specific examples mentioned by the panjandrum appeared: Desperate Romantics, the cheesy, irreverent romp about the Pre-Raphaelites which wa

But the other cited example of the new policy arrives this week – and Small Island is so carefully made and engrossing that it should reassure at least some of those doubts. Based on Andrea Levy's Orange Prize-winning novel about the impact of Jamaican immigrants on post-war Britain, it has a haunting story and a great cast to interpret it.

It's notable that the black characters are all played by familiar faces: David Oyelowo from Spooks, Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later, Ashley Walters from Hustle and So Solid Crew, Nikki Amuka-Bird from Survivors, etc. Even a decade ago, they would not have been able to cast so many "name" black actors. And while I'm no expert on West Indian accents, they all sound pretty convincing at the lilting, Anglicised tones of upwardly-mobile Jamaicans of the time.

But the story is also about the effect of the newcomers on Britain itself, particularly through the character of Queenie, played by the always-excellent Ruth Wilson (see feature, page 6). She's a discontented white landlady who comes to identify with her black tenants as fellow outsiders, as captivated by their descriptions of exotic Jamaica as they have been by the idea of elegant Mother England they grew up hearing about.

The most besotted is Hortense, played by Naomie Harris, a young teacher who is determined to come to Britain, in part to follow the man she's obsessed with. "Is it true that in England they have electric light in every room?" she marvels. "I would like a garden, a small one would suffice."

Sadly, when she does come over to join her husband, it's to a dark, dingy room in a lodging house, with a chamber pot.

Hortense has married Oyelowo's Gilbert, a cheerful, ambitious chap, but lurking in the background of both her life and Queenie's is the rather sexier and mysterious Michael, played by Ashley Walters. Then there's Queenie's dull-but-loyal husband, Bernard, who has lost most of his storyline from the book; yet Benedict Cumberbatch has risen to the challenge with a lovely, affecting performance.

The tangled love story is all unspoken yearnings and brief encounters, which keep the female characters, at least, pining for years. There are scenes here we've often seen before – the Blitz, the dreariness of post-war rationed Britain – but it's interesting to see them from the perspective of the Jamaicans who were told they were British until they actually came over here.

The one flaw is over-used narration, read by Hugh Quarshie, to fill in some of the background information that the characters themselves don't share. This is rarely a successful device and adaptors Paula Milne and Sarah Williams should have been braver and just cut it out. We don't really need to be told, for instance, that Hortense is an illegitimate child who never reveals this; Naomie Harris's vulnerable, prim performance, all her body movements precisely controlled, does enough to show us someone desperately eager to be seen as a lady.

But the drama itself is a fine one. While I hope that the BBC doesn't completely abandon the great classic adaptations, more of this kind of thing would be most welcome.

Meanwhile, not to beat a dead horse, but STV has not been showing most of ITV's dramas lately, replacing them with home-grown documentaries and imports. They've made an exception, however, for Mister Eleven, as it is clearly such a seminal, genre-changing work of art – the Cathy Come Home of our times, the Our Friends In The North of our day – that it simply couldn't be missed by STV's viewers. Or possibly they just got it cheap.

Mister Eleven is so chicklit that the DVD cover will probably feature a pastel handbag and stilettos. Michelle Ryan stars as an insane woman fixated on the statistic that most women marry their 11th sexual partner. In fact, she breaks up with new husband Sean Maguire on their wedding night on realising that he is in fact only number ten and therefore ... sorry, the plot is so stupid, I can't go on.

But of course that's not really the point – it's meant to be fun, or something. If your brain's off-switch can take it, enjoy. Oddly, Dev Patel is a waiter whose big line is: "I could ask the kitchen, sir". Is this all he could get after Slumdog Millionaire?

Ah look, it's Doctor Who, but not as we know him. Yes, David Tennant's voice is the same, but he's looking a bit flat – two-dimensional, in fact, in this new cartoon spin-off, Doctor Who Animation. The tale, about Area 51, is fine if breathless (the episodes are only 12 minutes long), but the animation is horrid: jerky, with dull backgrounds and blocky figures. Perhaps kids won't mind, but compared to the work of Pixar it's embarrassingly cheap. Anyway, shouldn't such a British institution have been handed over to Nick Park to lovingly recreate in good old Plasticine?

Small Island

Tomorrow, BBC1, 10:25pm

Mister Eleven

Friday, STV, 9pm

Doctor Who Animation

Today, BBC2, 10am

&#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman on December 5, 2009