Last Thursday at 9pm, BBC One broadcast the television adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s popular young adult book, Noughts & Crosses, into the homes of roughly 2.5 million people. Noughts & Crosses was first published in the early 2001 and is the first book in a series of five books and three novellas that depict what life is like in a fictional dystopian Britain, called “Albion,” where Crosses (black people) are the historical and contemporary oppressors of white people (Noughts). The books focus on the consequences of what happens when two young people Persephone or ‘Sephy’, a Cross, and Callum, a Nought, fall in love.
Some who clearly have not read or, perhaps, have misread the book and/or misunderstood the TV series took Thursday’s broadcast to be “anti-white” and “anti-British” propaganda. A writer for the Daily Mail lamented that the programme was nothing more than an attempt to “stir up antipathy” and that representations of deaths in police custody on the show, in the wake of the killings in police custody of Mzee Mohammed in Liverpool and Edson Da Costa in London a few years ago, were an “incendiary misrepresentation of law and order today.” A writer for UnHerd echoed this sentiment, claiming that this iteration of Noughts & Crosses was a “moral disaster,” that somehow “insults” the “British people that voted Brexit.” He went on to state that such programming was not necessary in 21st century Britain anyway because racism is “so absent from our society,” as evidenced by the fact that there are people of colour in Parliament and a person of colour in the Royal Family.
Amongst most people my age however, millennials and gen z’ers, such viewpoints are in the minority. Many of us took the Roc Nation-produced TV iteration of Noughts & Crosses in much the same way as how we took it to be when we first picked up the book as school, as a narrative about the legacies of race and racism in the West. Thus, for example the legacy of the West African “Aprican Empire” that colonised “Albion” in Noughts & Crosses is that Noughts are considered to be racially inferior, just like the narratives that the British Empire, that formally ruled over parts of black Africa until 1980, helped produce about black people. It is a provocative series, yes, but its purpose is not nefarious, it’s supposed to make us think more deeply about how racism operates today by flipping the script, so that our majority-white population better understands what it means to be a racialised minority and so that our minority-black population feels more comfortable in articulating their experiences.
Whilst the TV series does not exactly replicate the book – e.g. instead of a storyline about Noughts joining a Cross school, there is instead a depiction of a desegregated military – much of what we loved from the book remains in place and I found the six episodes, which ended on an edge-of-your-seat cliff-hanger, an incredibly satisfying watch. It also felt amazing to see so many dark-skinned black actors on screen, playing both oppressors and allies, particularly when you take into account that Noughts & Crosses has taken over the usual slot for Death in Paradise on BBC One. Whilst Death in Paradise is often critiqued for perpetuating white saviour narratives, where the bumbling black detectives of San Marie are unable to solve any cases without a white Englishman being flown in to have a “eureka” moment at the last second, one can hardly say the same for Noughts & Crosses. In this series, both black and white characters have agency.
Moreover, as we live today in a society where many black Britons are of direct West African descent it was particularly significant to hear Yoruba phrases like “E se” (thank you) and “pẹlẹ” (sorry) on screen and to see women of esteem proudly wearing geles, West African headdresses. It was wild to see all characters used the Yoruba word for dad “baba,” for white characters to have their names mispronounced and be accused of being “uppity” or having a “chip on their shoulder” for complaining about racism, and for white characters to talk of changing their surname to “Boateng” on their CV to get a job, like some black Britons talk of changing their foreign-sounding surnames today.
Even some of the subtle costume choices made by the show stand out, where the ‘nude’ plasters are dark-brown, almost scarily serendipitous at a time when Tesco has just released diverse skin-tone plasters; and where all of the white characters try to emulate black hair styles, curling their hair and wearing it in dreadlocks and braids. Often in Britain we hear stories of black people’s hair being policed, whether that be in schools where Afro-hair is deemed unruly or in the workplace where black hair is deemed unprofessional. And across the pond legislators in California have introduced the CROWN Act, prohibiting discrimination based on hair style and texture. Seeing white characters forced to assimilate to blackness whilst today many black people feel forced to assimilate to whiteness felt very timely; particularly as just last year Emma Dabiri’s book, Don’t Touch My Hair, sparked many conversations within the black British community about the demonisation of black hair.
These intelligent twists that are unique to the television iteration of Noughts & Crosses make sense in the vibrant world that they’ve created, where being an African is something to be proud of. I almost wish I had a show like this to watch when I was younger, whilst I was growing up with the name Oluwaseun in predominantly white areas in England and subjected to racist taunts. Seeing Noughts & Crosses on screen and seeing characters take pride in their blackness would have been a gamechanger for me. And it has been for so many young people, with just a glance at #NoughtsAndCrosses on Twitter you can see many young tweeters exclaiming pride at their cultures being depicted on screen.
At a time in Britain where the extent of our race discourse is: a white man saying that discussing any notion of white privilege is “racist” on Question Time, a white woman crying that its “outrageous” to label racist comments racist on BBC Politics Live and a white man loudly shouting over black female guests on Good Morning Britain that he doesn’t “see racism” it is clear that change is needed. Perhaps Noughts & Crosses and the discussions that it provokes will be the shake-up we need.
