Tears, arguments and deeply human conversations about race: this moving, uplifting show sees Black Britons debate the UK’s problems – and it’s a masterclass in empathy
Since the millennium, reality TV has undergone a slow but steady shift – away from the pseudo-sociological experiment and towards the “dinner party descends into total chaos” genre. This latter-day variant is engineered to achieve a single goal: create a situation in which a group of people argue savagely (and usually drunkenly) over an extremely large table, until at least one person storms out, and everyone else sits there looking awkward. (Masters of the manoeuvre include: Made in Chelsea, Married at First Sight, and the Real Housewives franchise.)
On the face of it, the dinner-chaos format doesn’t seem the ideal vehicle for We Are Black and British (BBC Two), a two-parter that aims to examine the problems faced by Black people in the UK today, and to brainstorm potential solutions. Motivated, in part, by 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, the show invites six Black Britons with divergent opinions on race, society and politics to live together in a Cotswolds country pile for 10 days. There, they are encouraged to engage in a series of crackingly tense debates, which routinely erupt into full-blown rows over dinner every evening.
