There are a number of vertical glass surfaces in any home and many of these can reflect your image. Most of them are ordinary windows which, in the right light and with the right angle, can give a reasonably good reflection. Best of all are, of course, the mirrors which provide a clear (and hopefully pleasing) image. However, the glass surface that most disappoints in terms of reflection is the television screen – particularly if you are Black in Britain.

This is true for the 400 or so stations on the Virgin Media cable platform and for the 650+ stations on the Sky satellite platform. But where it matters the most is on the 50+ stations currently occupying the prime Freeview digital terrestrial platform that broadcasts, for free, into the vast majority of the 25 million households in Britain. Due to its huge reach across the population and that it is home to the nation’s flagship TV channels (including the global ranging and “public funded” BBC) Freeview wields immense power in shaping the country’s values and thoughts and how communities are (or aren’t) validated.

The issue of the absence of Black faces on TV in Britain has been a longstanding concern going back to the 1970s and remains an unresolved issue. The fear of victimisation and reprisal has hampered many in the industry from speaking openly about what was happening to them and it took actor Patrick Robinson a decade to reveal that he was punished and denied acting roles for ten years after voicing his concerns about the BBC. Recently David Harewood, Morgan Freeman, Lenny Henry, Reggie Yates and Paterson Joseph have all also put their heads above the parapet and talked about the systemic and institutional blockades in the film and television industry in Britain (particularly on the main Freeview channels – BBC, ITV, C4, C5 and Sky). Hopefully united voices will mean that they won’t suffer retribution through denial of work and other punishment.

However, what are the roles/stories/programmes that these actors (speaking on behalf of the wider community) are seeking to see on British screens? Probably those that reflect the wide spectrum of the lives of Black people in Britain. That would be wonderful. But would that be enough?

Data from the 2011 UK census indicates that there are four interconnecting and overlapping elements of the Black community in Britain – Caribbean, African, Black British and mixed-race.

It is probably the Black British element that the actors above have (rightly) most strongly argued for but, despite recent and rare delights such as E4’s Youngers, BBC’s Some Girls and ITV’s Ice Cream Girls, the amount of available content is woefully and disgracefully low. But one has to look way back to the 1970s, 80s and 90s to the times of ‘Empire Road’, ‘The Fosters’, ‘No Problem’, ‘Desmond’s’ and ‘The Real McCoy’ to find any regular Black faces on what would now be Freeview in Britain.
Although not on Freeview, the African community has done well to establish successful and sustained TV channels on the Sky satellite network. These channels reflect not only the lives of the British African communities but also strongly reflect the cultures that they still draw on from Africa itself. The existence of these channels also helped to support the development of the first ever British African sitcom series Meet The Adebanjos.
 

© Ron Belgrave/BUFF Enterprises Ltd MMXIII (All rights reserved).
Those of you who would like to submit a script or a film for board consideration for this year’s British Urban Film Festival please visit the BUFF SUBMISSIONS 2013 page at http://www.britishurbanfilmfestival.co.uk