The comic and actor fronted an informative and entertaining documentary about lesser-known black champions of arts and tradition
A evaluate by Anita Singh for London’s Telegraph.
This week, there are two BBC Two programmes that inform the story of immigrants in Britain from the Fifties onwards. The primary is Again in Time for Birmingham, concerning the expertise of British Asians, by which a household gamely submits to dressing in humorous costumes, consuming some horrible meals of the time (Spam) and residing in a home with orange decor.
The second is Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain, and it’s a extra inquiring, deeper dive into the interval. Henry – as soon as identified for Tiswas, Comedian Reduction and his personal comedy reveals – has reduce a severe determine lately. The programme started with him strolling down his outdated avenue in Dudley, doing an affectionate impression of his mum’s instruction to her youngsters to “h’combine”. Black folks of Caribbean heritage have achieved nice issues within the arts, he mentioned.
“However as I’ve received older, I’ve tried to suppose: what does integration really imply?” Henry requested. “Does it imply we, as Caribbean folks, must sacrifice our tradition? How a lot of my tradition has Britain absorbed?”
He didn’t reply the primary query, not less than within the first episode of this two- half documentary that includes a wealth of contributors, however Caribbean tradition was illustrated properly. First, there was calypso music – taken up by Lance Percival on That Was The Week That Was – and there was ska. White children fell for ska and commenced copying the “impolite boy” fashions, which led to some confusion, as Levi Roots wryly famous: “Flip round to the precise and there have been the opposite type of skinheads – they weren’t the style skinheads, they had been the fascist skinheads who needed to tear your head off.”
The programme confirmed us the work of pioneers within the arts: textile artist Althea McNish, summary painter Sir Frank Bowling, theatrical agent Edric Connor. It was enlightening to find out about them, as a result of they don’t seem to be family names. Not like Floella Benjamin, whose presence can nonetheless gentle up the display (seeing a clip of her on Playschool educating youngsters learn how to inform the time led me on an entire different practice of considered why no equal show exists now, however let’s save that one for an additional day).
This was all set towards the racial politics of the time, which made for much less nice viewing. Windrush arrivals being denied lodgings, violence on the streets of Notting Hill. On this context, the jubilation that greeted the West Indies’ victory at The Oval in 1976 made good sense.