S.o much of 2020 has been spent debating, debating and debating on history, from the removal of images (“destroying our history” as the protesters would have it) to a reassessment of Britain’s legacies on slavery and colonialism, all inspired by the Black revival Remaining significant. In this context, Small Ax could not have chosen a better moment, or found a better way of feeling. From “destroying” British history, Small Ax enriches it. It fills holes in our national story that not many of us even realized existed. It will no doubt stand as Steve McQueen ‘s magnum opus, and as a landmark on British television. But this five-film series represents just a glimpse of what history needs: the experience of Caribbean immigrants in London, from the late 1960s to the 1980s. The fact that this was an almost unrecorded land tells its own story.
When it comes to social history, British TV tends to use a dry, brutal docudrama mode or dramatize the story to death with conversational reactions, slow editing and elegant retelling. Little Ax won’t do either. His stories are based on real people and events: the trial of the Mangrove Nine; a typical reggae night party in 1980; the early role of trailblazing police Leroy Logan; the hard coming of the age of writer Alex Wheatle; and the story of a smart schoolboy from the 70s identified as “under-educated” (based on McQueen’s own experience). But they are full of emotion, passion, emotions, everyday experiences, food, music, conversation, dance, emotion – life.
So much of that life comes from the amazing actors. Some of them are already familiar, such as John Boyega and Letitia Wright. Some are worthless veterans, such as Shaun Parkes, Llewella Gideon, Steve Toussaint, and others we tend to hear more of (Sheyi Cole, Amarah-Jae St Aubyn, Michael Ward, Naomi Ackie to name a few). Many young black Britons play characters who may be parents or grandparents. There is commitment and determination for their achievements.
But credit must go to McQueen as the main promoter of Small Ax and creative director. Despite being an established, Oscar-winning director, he’s still something out there, it seems. It brought an artist’s sense into the cinema and stands out even more on the small screen. Shabier Kirchner’s excellent camera work is incredibly fluid, intuitive and intuitive (note how each film is shot in a different format). The design of the production still looks sensible in terms of beauty. And McQueen provides ample space for non-talk moments that conventional television would be cut off from: waiting in the sunny backroom before the birth in Mangrove; the extended dance scenes at Lover’s Rock; the picture of Wheatle lying powerlessly on the floor, straitjacketed and almost catatonic. The director knows that images have as much power as words.
McQueen’s outside sense of a piece with what would be seen as a collection of stories from the outside. Most of them are located in the safe havens that Caribbean immigrants might have carved from a dominant white culture that was often hostile to them. One of the strands that runs through Small Ax stories is, of course, racism – at all scales, from the foundation to the steep: “Go and move from the trees as you return home in the jungle, ”praises 12-year-old Kingsley former teacher of Education. Small Ax is a testament to the resilience and resilience of black Britain against such hostility, but it is also a hallmark of the minutiae; the gradient of the Caribbean accents, the rituals of the ballroom and the mealtimes, the music and the literature, the language and the expressions (we have never heard so much gnashing of teeth on our screens). Non-Caribbean viewers who watch Small Ax get that them they are foreigners, drawn into parallel Britain with which they had little knowledge.
We can lay ourselves as a nation about how far we have come, and we can be proud of McQueen and his colleagues for raising the standard of British television, but let us not forget how long it will take e get here, and how much further is to go. That may have been brought home in the summer by Boyega ‘s look, fresh from his turn as Leroy Logan, delivering an impassioned speech in Hyde Park in support of the Black Lives Matter protests. As Leroy’s father tells him in Red, White and Blue, “The world, it’s just moving on. Always do. Big change … it’s a slow turning wheel. ”