Daniel Lawrence Taylor’s teen drama Boarders is a bit of a Trojan horse. From the aesthetic, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a shiny CBBC comedy. But the series, which follows a group of Black, inner-city teens through the looking-glass into an elite boarding school, is a sharp satire of these institutions. It doesn’t just take aim at the pomp and tradition of British boarding schools – although there’s plenty of familiar sending up of rugby lads. It also goes further to explore the range of incredibly complex dynamics that emerge every day for Black people in elite institutions.
Take its first two seasons, which took an unexpectedly cynical look at the business of diversity, equality and inclusion. After the teens enrol at the fictional St Gilbert’s, it quickly emerges that their scholarship programme is an attempt to rehabilitate the school’s image, which took a knock after a pupil poured champagne on a homeless man.
