Guardian Article: Why black British drama is going online, not on TV

Reposted from The Guardian

Faced with British TV's indifference to black shows, young writers and directors are taking their talents to the web to find an audience. Bim Adewunmi talks to some of them

HBO's recent comedy drama Girls, created and co-written by indie wunderkind Lena Dunham, has been the subject of a seemingly endless stream of think pieces. The crux of the matter is the diversity – or lack thereof – that the show displays. A full cast list from Imdb.com showed parts for non-white cast members such as "Jamaican Nanny", "Young Black Guy", "Roosevelt Hotel Bellhop" and "Tibetan Nanny". Of course, Girls is only the latest in a long line of New York-set TV shows that paint a distinctly monochromatic picture. From Seinfeld to Sex and the City to Friends (which recycled the same storyline for two black characters over the series), there is a small-screen tradition of whitewashing the big city.

British TV is not doing much better. The last sitcom with a majority black cast was the Ian Pattison-scripted and almost universally panned The Crouches in 2003. Before that, it was Desmond's, which ended in 1994, but now thankfully lives on on Channel 4oD. The big breakout successes with majority black casts have been in the genre of gritty "urban realism", usually focusing on inner-city London, crime and drug deals. The success of one such programme, Channel 4's Top Boy, has seen it recommissioned for a second series.

British actor and comedian Angie Le Mar recently said: "We decided to make [new sitcom The Ryan Sisters] ourselves and put it up online because we just can't get TV networks interested. There really is a lot of racism in the industry: they're not ready for black women. Commissioners say: 'Can you make white people laugh?' Or: 'Middle England won't like you.'" Her sentiments were echoed by David Harewood, last seen in the US TV drama, Homeland, who said there "aren't that many roles for authoritative, strong, black characters in this country". Whether the fault lies with commissioners or writers, the fact remains that the spectrum of blackness on TV is narrow, and has remained almost stagnant in the last decade or so. Where, therefore, are the newest generation turning in order to see a broader representation of themselves? The internet, of course.

The success of the American series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, which debuted on YouTube in February last year, was unprecedented. Series creator Issa Rae, a 26-year-old Stanford graduate, wrote the title character after reading an article asking "where the Black Liz Lemon [the awkward TV writer played by Tina Fey on 30 Rock] was. And I was like: 'I need to do this now before it's too late,'" she says. Since the show started, its episodes have been viewed more than 6m times and it has more than 61,000 fans on Facebook. When the producers ran out of money mid-season, they started a fundraising drive – contributions from fans came flooding in, eventually raising more than $56,000. The ABG (as it's known to its fans) brand has even spread to retail – you can buy t-shirts, wristbands and decals from their online shop.

The success of ABG has opened the floodgates for minority film-makers. Web series such as The Number, The Couple, and The Unwritten Rules have popped up in the last year; written, produced and starring black and non-white actors in roles less restrictive than mainstream TV often allows. With a host of new black dramas, the British are catching up too.

Brothers With No Game

The Brothers With No Game is a blog written anonymously by four twenty-something friends from London. It follows four men as they traverse London life, relationships and jobs. Their web series debuted on 11 June. For them, writing the show as a web series was an obvious choice. "We started with the blog in October 2010 and have had an amazing response; more than half a million hits. We began thinking it would work well as a series and decided on an online sitcom. With an online medium, we can do things our own way," says Justin Credible (one of the creators' nicknames).

The "Brothers" are in their mid-20s (25 to 27) and are all of British African descent. They all came from non-TV backgrounds: how much of a challenge was that? "From a writing perspective, it wasn't anything too new, although it's a scripted format. One of us is hoping to become a scriptwriter, so this is kind of their niche," he says. "We've been fortunate enough to have a producer who had produced a couple of online things, and he gave us the benefit of his experience. But we don't have a huge production company behind us." Funding the show has also proved challenging: "We have to fund everything ourselves – we've had to be creative with what we have in order to make it work. But people have seen what we're trying to do and have asked to join in." They've read the blog and enjoyed it and they want to be a part of it." BWNG are planning a Crowdfunder campaign (the UK equivalent of Kickstarter) in the future, from which they will pay the actors and production costs.

A casting call brought in 80 actors, something Credible describes as "an amazing response. It was obviously something that they thought would do well, and it shows how people want to get into meatier roles that are a bit different." On the subject of blackness on television, Credible says: "I don't think we're given a chance to really showcase what we're all about in terms of the black British population. I mean, Top Boy and My Murder are brilliant TV and really engaging viewers but I think there's also space for dramas and sitcoms and thrillers." He continues: "Variety is the key message here. There's a narrow representation of what it means to be black; there need to be different stories told." The rise in web series by black creators is a direct response, he says. "It's why we're taking things into our own hands. If it's not going to be on TV, at least we'll be online – it'll be interesting to see how it impacts television."

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