Latest news with #GetMillieBlack
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marlon James on why Kingston is Jamaica's beating cultural heart
If you're looking for a good time, Jamaica is where to go – as Marlon James knows all too well. The author, who was born and raised in Kingston, often heads back to the island from his base in New York to shoot documentaries, hang out with his friends and (these days) to film TV shows like Get Millie Black. And with more tourists than ever heading to Jamaica to enjoy it's sun, sea, and rum we sat down with James to discuss how to do a holiday the right way. I am going to advocate for Kingston. I lived there most of the time I was in Jamaica, and it's still my favourite place. I think a lot of times when people come to Jamaica, they go straight for the beaches or for the coastline, and that's great, but Kingston actually is on the coast. And the great thing about being in Kingston is that you're in a centre of culture. There's always something going on. There's Dub Club in the hills, if you want to get classic reggae; there's always some sort of party going on. I was last there a month ago, with me and my beautiful self. I was actually shooting a documentary about being an LGBT Jamaican coming back home. So that involved talking to a lot of young people, talking to people in different scenes and so on. I'm there quite a bit: for me, Jamaica will always be home. If I'm at a hotel, I'm usually in Treasure Beach. So I'm usually at Jakes. Or if I'm in Kingston, I'm usually at AC Hotel. If I want to be up in the hills, I go all the way up to Strawberry Hill. Rasta pasta. Rastafarian culture was vegan before we had the name vegan. And I like Rasta food. It's sort of a guilty pleasure, I think. How do you take fettuccine alfredo and take out all the nasty parts? I'm not the biggest fan of dairy. It's kind of that. When I'm there, I'm eating at friend's houses. Restaurants? There's one up in the hills, a vegan restaurant called Stush in the Bush. Stush, in Jamaica, is patois for posh. It's absolutely fantastic. You definitely have to reserve ahead, because it's a pretty remote location. I love going to that when I can. But I'm a pretty regular Jamaican, so I'm usually not far from somewhere selling Jamaican patties. I'm either eating patties or I'm on the street buying pan chicken late in the night. They're cooking it in an old oil drum, it's steaming hot, and it's two in the morning and you're standing on the roadside and you're eating chicken. I'd hope I'm in Kingston, so I would check out the National Gallery. Then I'd probably go to one of the many restaurants that are in downtown Kingston. You particularly want the old Chinese restaurants, which may have secretly been there a hundred years; you want to soak that up. I think downtown Kingston gets a bad rap. It's actually really quiet, which is weird. I would start from there, from the harbour, and just go all the way up into the interior, go to Devon House, in the centre of Kingston. It was built by a runaway slave who escaped to Venezuela and came back a millionaire. Then just sort of keep going, until you hit the hillside, and then you can go to like The Gap Café in the hills, or you can go to Skyline Drive and look out at Kingston. Slip into Dub Club near the end of the night and then just come back down off the hill, and then you're done. Go to somewhere where there isn't a road. It's one thing to go to the port town Ocho Rios. But have you been to the small town of Above Rocks? There are places in, say, St Catherine, where, without knowing it, you're suddenly on a mountain cliff and you're looking over the mountains. The interior country is so fantastic. And when you go there, you're basically dropped into 1924, except they have wireless internet. It's a great way of seeing all the different Jamaicas there are without going very far. Grace Jones's My Jamaican Guy, because it's a song about rural Jamaica. It's about her guy, but it's also about a person who washes clothes by the river and lives a pretty rural and idyllic life. And I think in some ways that always reminds me of Jamaica. Then just stuff like Bob Marley's Three Little Birds, which does it as well, or a Jamaican song like Greetings, by Half Pint. But ask me tomorrow, and I'll give you three different songs. There's two. I can't believe I'm going to talk about a beach, but I want to talk about a beach. For me, there's a beach called Winnifred Beach. You're not going to see it on the map. You have to ask somebody where it is and they'll show you. It's almost as if you accidentally tripped into the Blue Lagoon; it's fantastic and it's not that well-known. Then, there's a very famous beach called Fort Clarence, which people go to. Stay on that road and continue going, and you'll come across this thing called Two Sisters Cave. They'll tell you it's not open; it's open. And you can go down into the cave. You can even take a canoe from in the caves out to open sea. That's my secret place. In Jamaica, just go until you find something. Somebody's always having a party, somebody's always having some event, preferably downtown, preferably somewhere near the sea. So there, you know, there's always something going on. There's always a party; there's always some sort of street dance going on. There was a time in Jamaica when the biggest dances started at two in the morning. Wow. And you just stay partying until eight; basically morning to morning parties. Clear your slate, because it will be filled up. My best friend Ingrid. I mean, you can call any Jamaican to have a good time. Honestly, call a total stranger. We're fun-loving people. We love to enjoy ourselves, so you're never too far from a celebration. And Jamaicans are very open and welcoming. Get out of the hotel, honestly, and if you're at a hotel that tries to discourage you from going out, leave that hotel. Jamaicans are very big on style. They're very big on fashion. Don't be the one idiot to overdress and end up sweating. Stay away from the Jamaican clichés. You do not need a 'No problem' T-shirt. In Jamaica, you kind of come as you are. And I think that's part of the laid-back atmosphere. It doesn't necessarily mean underdress. There is a kind of casual glamour to it. People are dressed simple, but they're put together. It's a T-shirt and shorts where it's probably tailored or something, it's the little details. Certainly bring home the coffee, because it's super expensive. Once you leave Jamaica, grab as much of that Blue Mountain coffee as you can. I do; I am kind of shameless. Yeah, if it's Jamaican, I say grab the food. Grab a box of patties. Grab your Jamaican stuff, like, find out what a gizzada is and ask for it. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. Just carry back all these things that will perplex British customs. Get Millie Black is streaming now on Channel 4
The Guardian
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in TV: Get Millie Black; With Love, Meghan; A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story; Towards Zero
Get Millie Black (Channel 4) | Love, Meghan (Netflix)A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story (ITV1) | Zero (BBC One) | iPlayer Well, here's something. New five-part Channel 4 detective drama Get Millie Black, mainly set in Kingston, Jamaica, is the first TV show created and written by Booker-winning Jamaican author Marlon James (A Brief History 0f Seven Killings), and its literary bent is evident from the off. Each episode showcases the internal narrative of a different character. First, the titular heroine (Tamara Lawrance), a study in dualism, one moment speaking in measured English tones (Millie was sent to the UK in her teens), the next in fluent patois. Returning to work as a Kingston police detective after the death of her mother, she must deal with the rage of her transgender sister, Hibiscus (a raw debut from Chyna McQueen), and a case that takes in drugs, violence, homophobia, lingering colonialism, corruption and missing children. This is a drama rich in complexities. In a virtuoso performance, Lawrance holds the centre as the bold, uncompromising Millie Black. White people barely feature, apart from Joe Dempsie's Scotland Yard detective, whom Black dismisses and teases ('He's only a white man, darling. All balls, no cock'). Pretty much every time you meet a new character, they come fully loaded with traits and backstory. When James set out to write this series, he really wrote it. Kingston itself is presented as a volatile contradiction of staggering beauty (blue waters, sandy beaches), bleak reality (poverty, criminality, brutality) and vibrant culture (if you're interested, Get Millie Black's brilliant theme tune is Ring the Alarm by Shanique Marie). There are some energy dips and missteps, not least an untidy tangling of plotlines towards the end, but in the main it's an impressive and original screenplay from James and a star-making turn from Lawrance. Meghan Markle's new eight-part lifestyle series, With Love, Meghan, landed on Netflix in a fragrant detonation of essential oils, edible flowers and homemade beeswax candles. In what may be the last chance for the Sussexes to hang on to their $100m Netflix deal, as well as a curtain-raiser on Meghan's Desperate Trad-Wife merch flogging via her new company, As Ever, the stage was set for lifestyle greatness. Or something. Filmed in radiant Montecito, California, but not at the couple's actual home, the setup involves Meghan receiving different guests each episode (friends, chefs, etc). Thus positioned, she bestows her upcycled Martha Stewart hostess worldview (there's no royal gossip like there was in those documentaries) while wearing stealth-wealth clothes, serving mountainous platters of crudites and banging on about how everything is 'amazing!' and 'exciting!' Despite being postponed from its original release date because of the California fires, with the outside world darkening by the moment and the bulk of Meghan's enthusiasms costing more than most weekly household budgets, With Love, Meghan is TV tone deafness in extremis. The format ('Guests stand at kitchen island making stilted small talk and praising Meghan') could also do with a rethink. The first guest, a makeup artist called Daniel, obligingly turbo-gushes: 'Why does no one present peas like this? They're like little pearls.' However, the next guest, The Office's Mindy Kaling, addresses her hostess as 'Meghan Markle'. 'You know I'm Sussex now,' says the duchess a little sharply (does she give Kaling the stink eye?), quickly adding that it's her children's surname. It's so awful (and brilliant), I'm impressed that Netflix (and Meghan) didn't cut the scene. Elsewhere, her cooking isn't at all bad, and she's not that stiff (she's not above day drinking cocktails with her guests). For some, With Love, Meghan may hit the spot as an escapist irony watch. Others may balk at the interminable lifestyle churn (homemade bath salts, herb picking with trugs). Harry is only briefly wheeled on at the end, like a confused child who's about to be put to bed. A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, a four-part drama by Kelly Jones, based on Carol Ann Lee's book A Fine Day for Hanging, marks 70 years since the 1955 execution of 28-year-old Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Ellis, played by Lucy Boynton, never denied shooting her lover, racing car driver David Blakely (Laurie Davidson), but the drama addresses the myriad injustices of her case: Blakely's psychological and physical abuse (he punched Ellis in the stomach, making her miscarry); how the trial was 'rigged' to protect others (including a sleazy type played by Mark Stanley); the fact that Ellis's peroxide-blond hair, nonconformist ways and class ('common little tart') were as much in the dock as the single mum of two. Initially, it's hard to warm to Boynton's chilly, unsympathetic Ellis, whose faux-clipped tones Blakely mocks ('What is your real voice?'). Ellis is too proud – and disturbed – to let her lawyer (Toby Jones) make a proper case for clemency until it's too late. Incidentally, Nigel Havers plays his real-life grandfather, Sir Cecil Havers, the judge who presided over the trial; upset by the death sentence, Havers wrote to the home secretary asking for a reprieve for Ellis, and after her death sent money for her son's upkeep every year. A Cruel Love is marred by crass melodrama, including preparation for the hanging (dangling nooses et al), though arguably the barbarity of capital punishment should be shown. In later episodes, Boynton brings Ellis's humanity and vulnerability to the fore (sitting in her cell doing jigsaws; nervously eating her last breakfast) and it's very powerful. Over on BBC One, Rachel Bennette's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Towards Zero kicked off. It's set at the windswept fictional Gull's Point, where Hollywood royalty Anjelica Huston camps it up as a wealthy aristo. Languishing in a vast posh bed, tinkling servant bells, she resembles a haughty pin cushion. Elsewhere, the cast includes Clarke Peters (The Wire) as a lawyer and Anjana Vasan (We Are Lady Parts) as a lady's companion, while Matthew Rhys plays a moody sleuth, staggering around clifftops, coat-tails flapping. This three-parter is enjoyable enough (I'm always up for a Christie) but is too febrile, and at one point (spoiler alert) there are highly sexed-up shenanigans atop a staircase involving (don't look, Miss Marple!) heads up skirts. Whatever your thoughts on Agatha Christie, never mistake her for Bridgerton. Star ratings (out of five) Get Millie Black ★★★★With Love, Meghan ★★A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story ★★★Towards Zero ★★★ Pauline Boty: I Am the Sixties(BBC Four) A poignant, revelatory documentary about the 1960s British artist Pauline Boty, who blazed a trail for feminist art and died of cancer at 28, refusing treatment while she was pregnant. The Leopard(Netflix) Intense Italian-language period drama based on Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa's 1958 novel, which also inspired Visconti's 1963 film, about Sicilian aristocrats in the 1860s. Imagine: The Academy of Armando(BBC One)The Thick of It, The Day Today, Alan Partridge, Veep… an in-depth profile of the influential Scottish comedy writer-director Armando Iannucci. Interviewees include Chris Morris, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peter Capaldi and Jesse Armstrong.
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Get Millie Black review – every bit as great as a Caribbean True Detective
Over the past week, I have found myself cringing at a series of tabloid articles describing Get Millie Black as a rival to the BBC's Death in Paradise. Sure, both shows are set on Caribbean islands and feature black British police officers who used to work for the Metropolitan force. But that is truly where the similarities end. The comparisons have reminded me of the old advertising maxim about King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne: they are both British men born in 1948 who have been married twice and have pots of money. But, well, they don't exactly have a ton in common, do they? And so to Get Millie Black, which isn't a soapy murder mystery with a surfeit of former EastEnders stars, but rather an ambitious five-part drama based on a short story by Booker prize winner Marlon James, and adapted by the man himself. Touching on discrimination against LGBTQ+ Jamaicans, police corruption, people-smuggling and the echoes of colonialism that continue to ring out, it doesn't exactly take a chipper 'case of the week' approach. Where it does slip into well-worn procedural territory, the excellent performances and general sense of unease seeping out of almost every scene keep it on track, in the same vein as True Detective and Mare of Easttown before it. Our heroine – played ably, and often hauntingly, by Small Axe's Tamara Lawrance – is a Jamaican-born Briton and former Scotland Yard detective, who has found herself back on the island of her birth (there was, she quips, 'only so much shitty weather and institutionalised racism I could take'). Her abusive mother is dead, but the brother she thought was also deceased is alive, if not totally well. In the Gully – a storm drain repurposed as slum housing for Kingston's outcasts – Millie reunites with her sibling, now known as Hibiscus, or Bis (the excellent Chyna McQueen, in her first screen role), a self-assured yet vulnerable sex worker and owner of the world's best voicemail message ('You've reached Bis – now state your biz!'). The scenes they share are the connective tissue of the series, as James delves into the lifelong trauma of growing up as a transgender woman in Jamaica and the splintered relationship between the two sisters. Similarly, we learn how Millie's colleague Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) has concealed his identity as a gay man in a nation still blighted by homophobia, posturing as a straight 'stud'. Each episode is lightly filtered through the experiences of a different narrator, a stylistic touch that also takes us further into each character's psyche without veering too far from the A plot. Crucial to that plot, of course, is the crime that Black is trying to unpick: a missing person case involving an impressionable black teenager, who seems to have been groomed by the scion of an influential white family. What does the smarmy Freddie Summerville want with schoolgirl Janet, and how does their icky 'relationship' connect to a wider hunt for Freddie – and a possible people-trafficking ring? Cleverly, the racial tensions therein are also mirrored in Black's own fractious relationship with her colleague Luke Holborn. A white superintendent dispatched from London to track down Freddie, he is played with just the right amount of mansplainy condescension by Joe Dempsie. The episodes set in Jamaica are an easy five stars, and the Caribbean cast get all the best lines, not least when Millie and Curtis are described by their shouty colleague as 'bench and batty' – in other words, joined at the hip. It is only later, as Black swaps one small island for another and comes back to London, that the criminal conspiracy at the core of the whole thing begins to feel a little holey. We also lose that central relationship between Bis – who is back in Jamaica – and Millie, which underscores just how vital it was in the first place. The character of Millie-Jean Black, however, is a force of nature, and a joy to watch, wherever she is in the world. Lawrance conveys her angst and her unshakeable conviction, as well as code-switching seamlessly between her British and Jamaican accents in the way that many people do without realising when back in the motherland. This isn't Death in Paradise. But if you're OK with a little more blood and a little less whimsy, you may find it just as good – or even better. Get Millie Black is on Channel 4 now
The Guardian
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It changed my life': Get Millie Black, the thrilling Caribbean crime drama shaking up TV
You've probably never met anyone quite like Millie Black, the detective protagonist of a new Jamaica-set crime thriller. But Marlon James has. James is the acclaimed author of five novels, including 2014's Booker prize winner, A Brief History of Seven Killings, and now he's making the move into television, as Get Millie Black's creator – with a disputed source of inspiration. 'I keep telling my mother it is not based on her! She thinks I'm in denial,' he tells me down the line from his art-filled Brooklyn apartment. James's mother, Shirley Dillon-James, was 'a pioneer', he admits: one of the first women to make detective in 1950s Jamaica, 'so she was basically working for the queen. She dealt with colonialism, sexism, all of that stuff.' Jamaica gained independence from the UK in 1962, but the 'colonialism' and 'sexism' parts still figure for Millie Black as she negotiates a career begun in London's Metropolitan Police, and now transferred to the Kingston Central Division. But also: 'Millie may be more influenced by me than by my mom,' says James. 'In the sense that I've always looked at writing as a form of detective work. It's always been, how am I gonna solve this mystery?' Ultimately, it is neither the writer nor his mother who will for ever be associated with this instantly iconic TV cop. That honour goes to Tamara Lawrance, who stars as Millie – and she couldn't be happier about it: 'If this became the thing I'm known for, I'd be so thankful,' she says. 'It really changed my life.' The series opens with a flashback to Millie's childhood in Jamaica, and the close sibling bond that was severed when their mother sent her to London to live with relatives. Now back in Jamaica for more than a year, Millie is attempting to rebuild family ties and, in the meantime, has become close to her detective partner, Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jr), a gay man who must keep his sexuality secret from the rest of their colleagues. Lawrance was raised in north-west London by her Jamaican mother and always felt connected to her roots through food ('I grew up eating dumpling, callaloo, corned beef and rice – all the staples') and music ('My mum was a big fan of Sizzla Kalonji, Capleton, Queen Ifrica, Buju Banton'). Still, the show's shoot was the first time she'd been to Jamaica since she was a toddler and it had a profound effect: 'My mum has always been very open and warm, people gravitate to her, and when I went to Jamaica, I saw that in almost everyone I encountered,' she explains. 'I felt a lot of who I am sort of synthesise, […] to see that this might come from growing up on an island, not having to be 'a Black person', but [in a place where] you form your identity around your personality, rather than your skin colour.' It was also Lawrance's bone-deep understanding of the nuances of British-Caribbean identity that helped land her the role. She's so good as Millie Black – competent but fallible, assertive yet vulnerable – you could easily believe it was written with her in mind. In fact, there was a lengthy casting process, says James. 'I don't even think I knew who she was; we were seeing so many people. Then the casting director sent us this video and I'm like: 'Oh my God! It's Millie!'' Lawrance wore a shoulder-length, straight-hair wig to audition, 'which is not what Millie would wear at all', but her innate Millie-ness shone through. 'Because, more than anything else, Tamara didn't need cues as to when to switch to Jamaican.' He's referring to Millie Black's blend of British-accented English and Jamaican patois, a fairly common way of speaking in many British-Jamaican households. 'It was a relatively instinctive choice for me, because of who I understood Millie to be,' says Lawrance. 'Somebody who is trying to reintegrate herself, but is ultimately going to be perceived as foreign in Jamaica.' Rapid code-switching is just one of the ways Get Millie Black explores its central theme: the knotty, centuries-old, back-and-forth relationship between Britain and Jamaica. James is a Jamaican national who now lives in the US, where Get Millie Black aired to rave reviews on HBO Max at the end of last year. But 'the primary relationship [for Jamaica] is still the UK', he says. 'My Aunt Enid lived there, my Uncle Oscar lived there, my Aunt Pearl lived there … and my Uncle Errol was literally on the Windrush.' That is, the HMT Empire Windrush passenger ship, which landed on British shores in 1948, and became synonymous with postwar Caribbean immigration. 'That Steve McQueen series, Small Axe, hit hard because so many of my family went through it, and yet at the same time so much of that world was totally foreign.' The popularity of the London-originated lovers rock reggae sub-genre, for instance. 'They have this big moment where everybody's singing [Janet Kay's 1979 UK hit] Silly Games, like it's a major anthem. Me and the other Jamaicans were like: 'Do you know that song? I've never heard of it …'' Even growing up in Jamaica in the 1970s and 80s, studying Shakespeare and Dickens at his prestigious all-boys high school, James felt the influence of the erstwhile 'mother country'. 'The first time I came to London, I realised I sounded like the butler, because of the English I learned … So why the UK? Because there's unfinished business.' Namely, the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy, which finds contemporary parallels in the international human-trafficking case Millie and Curtis stumble into. 'The slave trade never really ended,' says James. 'Yeah, sure, it's a reverse trade; now we're going to Europe instead of the quote-unquote 'colonies', but it's still people being trapped. It's still people being tricked. It's still people being forced to do things they don't want to do.' In the show, when Scotland Yard catches wind of Millie's investigation, they send out a white British detective, Luke Holborn (Joe Dempsie), to assist. Or should that be 'take over'? Millie's relationship with him is occasionally collaborative but mostly antagonistic, an aspect of the writing Lawrance particularly appreciated: 'We see a lot of Black characters on TV, especially British TV, that assimilate,' she says. 'I don't think we see very many Black characters that are very pro-Black, in a way that hasn't become cartoonish or comedic. But Millie is, and she doesn't give a heck, really, what this guy thinks about her. In terms of what those two characters represent in world history, that's a very powerful thing.' Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion As well as being attuned to such reverberations through history, Get Millie Black is interested in the here and now of how queer people are marginalised, and sometimes violently persecuted, in Jamaican society. (Though this, it has been argued, is itself a legacy of British colonialism.) Through the character of Hibiscus, an impressive performance from trans Jamaican actor Chyna McQueen in her first screen role, Millie is connected to the Gully. This is the local nickname for the storm drains below Jamaica's New Kingston financial district which, until recently, provided refuge to a real community of LGBTQ+ people. Nowadays most of the former 'Gully Queens' have moved on, says James. 'Jamaica has come a long way with homophobia – I speak as a queer Jamaican who is there all the time. At the same time, trans women don't feel safe. A lot of the trans women, including in our cast, have already fled.' Meanwhile, back in the UK, Lawrance, who also identifies as queer, sees Get Millie Black as part of an exciting effort to diversify the stories told about Black Britons on screen, alongside another of her recent, acclaimed projects, Mr Loverman. 'You know, I've never seen love and relationships explored with that sensitivity or honesty before on British TV,' she says of the BBC adaptation of Bernardine Evaristo's novel about a closeted Antigua-born Londoner reaching crisis point. 'And likewise, I've never seen Chyna McQueen on TV before, y'know?' Even within Get Millie Black, multiple perspectives are included, a technique readers of A Brief History of Seven Killings will know well. Also characteristic of James's style is the deep appreciation for Jamaican music, evident from the opening bars of the theme tune, a new mix of Shanique Marie's Ring the Alarm that is surely destined for the UK charts ('No, but listen, what a banger!' says Lawrance). It all adds up to a cop show that depicts Caribbean culture with a thrilling intensity still too rarely seen on British television. The anti-Death in Paradise, if you will? James, personally, has nothing against that long-running cosy crime drama, set on the idealised island of Saint Marie. 'I think Caribbean comfort food is always welcome,' he says, diplomatically. But Millie Black? She would definitely insist on a little more hot sauce. Get Millie Black is coming to Channel 4 next month.
