. . To hate that there's not enough black people on tv

[Iloverusks]

Yesthey are flittered into the soaps and some tv shows. But since Desmond's there has not been a tv show where the majority of the cast are black. Of course there are countless "all white" shows.

In these multicultural times why is this the case?

There has been a black soap since Desmond's. I only know because it was filmed in a friend's house in South London about 15 years ago. I don't remember the name, and neither will you, because despite a fabulous cast, it was shit.

The Chiwetel Ejiofor thing about pensions was The Shadow Line, not to be confused with The Line of Duty with Lennie James - I got them hopelessly mixed up, and had to resort to Wikipedia.

The thing about "we want a black character, but we can't give them characteristics a/b/c because that would be sterotypical" came out interestingly in the Percy Jackson films. The books are pretty crap for multi-cultural casting, so the filmmakers decided to cast the sidekick, who is only ever described as having curly brown hair (and goats' legs; he's a satyr), as an African American, which was a good idea, except that his major characteristic in the first book is cowardice, which carries a lot of historic stereotypical baggage in the US, so they had to ditch that, and the relatively nuanced personality that went with it, in favour of an off-the-peg Happy Shopper Eddie Murphy characterisation - streetwise and womanising. I could see why they'd made the choices they made, but it wasn't an ideal outcome. Interestingly, Riordan clearly realised he could have done better, and his next book series visibly tries to make amends.

despite a fabulous cast, it was shit

It was.

But what was it eldritch? I can't remember and I can't google "shit black sitcom shot at my mates house"

I can't remember the name either. I can see the lead actor now, but don't know his name.

Hang on, this it?

I googled 'black sitcom south London' (this is the kind of incisive skill you need if you're a journalist, you see) and think - though this is via a Daily Vile link - that it could have been 'The Crouches'?

That's the one eldritch! Thanks. Great cast, but pants script.

Was it The Crouches? Had the guy that plays Patrick in EastEnders in it.

voila

Great minds!

Oh - Xpost!

Rudolph Walker was in this: classic example of bad attempt to do black drama. Worthy, over-emotional, fixated on talking about racism to the detriment of characterisation, plot or entertainment.

The Crouches doesn't even feature in this overview of black representation in British sitcoms so must have been quite epically shit...

the real Desmond's is no more , closed a couple of years back. I was very excited the first time I walked past it (it's down the road from us).

I don't watch much TV these days, just mainly sf/fantasy box sets so can't really comment too much, but one thing I have found utterly ludicrous for years now is how few Asian (and black, but Asian really) characters there are in EastEnders. It seems to be stuck in some kind of Ealing comedy version of the East End, which hasn't existed for at least 20 years. It might be an accurate representation of Dagenham or Romford, but the East End?

I don't think you can compare the UK and US either - the US has had a sizeable black population for far far longer than the UK - I would guess that we are a long way from having a black prime minister, for example.

Some great comments and good to read. Thank you all.

Someone made a really good point of the need to feel included. So not really important to have an all black show, but to feel that there are more than one black family to 10 white ones (eastenders, coronations st etc) and to not have every tv show where 90% are white and 10% are a minority- but then I guess that is just what represents the UK?

Recently we had Top boy which was predominantly black cast and a very (sad) but true storyline, but its a shame its only then black people are featured so much. I agree that the Asian community/other ethnic groups are the same.

As a 30yr old black female professional mummy, there are little characters that I can ever relate to on TV.

I think (following on from a poster above) that tv could be more representative as a whole by being more accurate - so for a drama set in a north of England ex-mining town it would probably be mostly white, but for one set in London like Eastenders there should probably be a lot more ethnic minority groups. That's not artificially editing, that's representing the country as it is. Which is a lot more diverse than tv is showing us at the moment! And also in things like fantasy and sci fi why does it have to match the population as it stands now anyway? It's made up, you can have anybody, so why not try to make things a little more diverse? It's the future, after all...

Really good points Greek gal, you are soooo right!

Eastenders actually annoys me the most. Being an East Londoner myself I feel that white English people are the minority!!! And don't get me started on Tanya's "mixed race" sister . .

I don't watch it anymore as it makes me angry

I think I need to become a writer

Maybe only 10% of actors are black, reflecting the proportion of the general population.
Outside big cities, multiculturalism is not the reality.

No, 10% of the country is NOT black. It's around 2%.

Im glad there arent more. Black characters on tv are either totally cringeworthy, or too 'street' (same thing I suppose) the producers here mostly dont have a clue about authentic. In the UK I wouldnt expect more black characters on tv anyway.

But 14% of England and Wales is non-white, according to the 2011 census.

(Mixed 2.2%, Asian 7.5%, Black 3.3% and Other 1.0%, FWIW)

This information from Wikipedia shows the ethnic diversity of the UK:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom

Only 2% black so I think that black people are well represented on UK TV in relation to the population.

Just realised that is 2001 data but unlikely to have changed significantly.