"Nothing about us without us" - screenwriter Jonny Wright on the evolution and impact of Black television
During the nineties, most of the actors were Black but the real Top Boy behind the scenes was usually white and male.
When I became an avid TV watcher in the 90s, I didn’t see myself or my family – Black British – reflected much on British TV. With the passing of its brilliant star, Norman Beaton, Desmond’s morphed into its inferior spin-off Porkpie, and the excellent Black (and Brown) sketch show, The Real McCoy, morphed into the equally brilliant (but very Brown) Goodness Gracious Me. I had to look across the Atlantic to The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and My Wife and Kids to see myself. These were shows about Black family life and I didn’t see their equivalents in the UK. What I didn’t know at the time was that these Black shows were created by white showrunners and hired predominantly white writers.
There were exceptions, of course, like Moesha or the Kim Bass-created Sister, Sister and Kenan & Kel, but a lot of these shows suffered from what I like to call “Top Boy syndrome”, where most of the actors are Black but where the real Top Boy behind the scenes is usually a white male showrunner - and often the producers and the writing teams are white as well. My favourite show of all time (and a show which I think largely acted as an inspiration for Channel 4’s British crime thriller, Top Boy) HBO’s The Wire, suffers from this same affliction: two white showrunners (David Simon and Ed Burns) with a predominantly Black cast.
As a young Black kid growing up in Yorkshire, seeing Theo Huxtable (played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner) in The Cosby Show and Will Smith (played by himself) in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air helped my self-esteem and sense of self-worth. These were funny, intelligent and inspirational young Black men. Now that I’m older, I can see how these shows could have been used as conservative propaganda of the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” kind, which Bill Cosby became infamous for espousing. If a show is dope, it’s dope, so ultimately, does it matter who created it?
What I didn’t know at the time was that these Black shows were created by white showrunners and hired predominantly white writers.
If Theo Huxtable can go to college (as he did in The Cosby Show's spin-off, A Different World) and he’s dyslexic, surely anyone can? Well, yeah, but maybe not everybody is from a two-parent home where their dad is a doctor and their mum is a lawyer. Ah well. How about Will Smith? He’s from a single-parent home, was born and raised in the West Philadelphia projects, and is still off to college. Again, maybe not everyone has a millionaire Bel-Air judge like Uncle Phil to bail them out when people “start[…] making trouble in [their] neighbourhood.”
However, as a youngster I wasn’t concerned with the politics, I wasn’t concerned with who wrote the shows. I was entertained, and I liked the aspirational aspect of these dramas. For more nuanced and grittier portrayals of Black life, I had the movies (although I was watching them on VHS back in those days). But I couldn’t find any Black British movies, so even there I was still looking to America: Menace II Society, all the Spike Lee films, John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood, and Poetic Justice. All of those movies were written by Black writers.
So: growing up in the 90s, Black British TV was scarce, Black British films were even more of a rarity, and, unbeknown to me a lot of the ‘Black’ American TV I was watching was actually written by white dudes. Now we’re in the 2020s, have things changed?
There is a phrase: “Nothing about us without us.” I believe it would currently be hard for a show to be written for an all-Black cast with all-white creatives. What is more common these days is colour-blind casting, which is what you see in Bridgerton, for instance, or shows with Black leads like Lupin and Hijack (both created by George Kay), which have Black actors in major parts but are still created by white people.
There’s nothing wrong with these particular shows per se, but the cynic in me thinks they’re a way for the industry to seem diverse without actually being diverse—without giving Black storytellers a seat at the table to tell their own stories.
Writers’ rooms have become more diverse, though. The UK has started to follow the American model (where series are created with several writers rather than by individuals or writing duos). I’ve been in some truly diverse writers’ rooms – and I’ve been in others where I’ve been the only Black person and have felt like the diversity hire, employed to give voice to the one Black character in the show or to speak on behalf of the entire Black population.
The UK has initiatives in place, like the Diamond Diversity Network, to ensure that the industry becomes more inclusive. I think these initiatives are important to ensure that diversity is something we see both in front of and behind the camera. It’s important for Black storytellers to have a seat at the table in writers’ rooms, and it’s much better when we are given more than one token seat.
It is also imperative that we are afforded the opportunity to create and run our own shows. Post-George Floyd, a variety of Black shows were greenlit on British TV, but how many of these were given that all-important second season?
One show that has been greenlit for a second season is Rapman’s Supacell on Netflix. Rapman’s career trajectory is an example of both what our parents told us when they told us we needed to work twice as hard as a white person to get anywhere and the roundabout way Black creatives have to go to circumnavigate the industry.
It’s important for Black storytellers to have a seat at the table in writers’ rooms, and it’s much better when we are given more than one token seat.
Rapman funded his own narrative rap videos on YouTube, culminating in Shiro’s Story. He then got signed by Jay Z’s Roc-a-Fella production company and made the film Blue Story. Only after these successes did British TV start to take any notice of him. Rapman himself has gone on record to say that without the existence of Top Boy, Blue Story would’ve probably never been commissioned.
It has now been proven that there is an audience for Black content, so we need to trust Black creatives to be the first to tell their own stories.
We need more Black British commissioners, gatekeepers and networks. In the States, African American Shonda Rimes (creator of Bridgerton) worked her way up through the TV network system, founding her company, Shondaland, which led to the creation of a plethora of diverse shows. Conversely, African American Tyler Perry worked outside of the traditional network system to create Tyler Perry Studios. Sadly, there isn’t a Black British equivalent of either model.
Now that I’m old enough to be a father myself, I still often look across the Atlantic, both as a consumer and a writer, in search of work. American writers’ rooms pay much more, and the production values of their flagship African American shows like Atlanta and Insecure are much higher. This is not just a Black or a white thing; it is across the board.
However, I would still argue that the African American audience is vastly under-served when it comes to that coveted hour-long drama space, as the powers that be seem to be much more comfortable if Black creatives are making them laugh, as opposed to presenting nuanced drama. Is this a hangover from the minstrel show days, or is it simply economics where they are less willing to take a risk on Black creatives in the more expensive one-hour drama slots?
Something needs to change.
I’m glad change is happening; it’s just too slow. There are still successful Black screenwriters in film in the States: in recent years, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Jordan Peele’s Get Out won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay Oscars respectively, but now a lot of filmmakers seem to be gravitating towards TV, including John Singleton (who recently made the TV series Snowfall, which starred Black British actor Damson Idris). Snowfall was a successful Black hour-long TV drama with multiple seasons, so perhaps there is hope, but will Damson Idris keep having to fly to America to get this kind of work?
If I look at the bigger picture, the British TV and film landscape is now much more diverse than it was when I was a lad, and long may that continue to change and improve. Drake, the Canadian rapper and actor, ended up being the ‘Black saviour’ of Top Boy as he invested when Channel 4 cancelled it after Season 2 and got Netflix on board.
So we’re now in an era where our Black brothers and sisters from across the Atlantic also look to us. I pray the next show with US (or Canadian) dollars ploughed into it is as Black off-screen as it is on.
Jonny Wright is a screen and stage writer. He was selected for Channel 4’s prestigious 4screenwriting course in 2019 and was awarded the Felix Dexter Bursary in 2017 by BBC Comedy. He co-created and co-wrote Little Darlings with Nathan Bryon for Sky Kids / Sky Cinema. Jonny is writing a pilot, The Waking, for Starz in the US and FEAR NO-ONE for World Productions. He is also writing a feature film, Coal Face, for the BFI. Jonny also acts and was in the Mike Leigh film A Running Jump; he can currently be seen in an episode of Daddy Issues on the BBC.