As season two of Noughts + Crosses (BBC One) opens, it is far away from the grim urbanity of its regular London setting. Young lovers Sephy (Masali Baduza) and Callum (Jack Rowan), a black politician’s daughter and a poor white boy, have grown up in a dystopia where black people, known as Crosses, shore up their monopoly of the country’s wealth and power with violence, while whites – AKA Noughts – are a furious, brutalised underclass. Sephy and Callum have chosen love over hate and are holed up together in the peaceful countryside.
It can’t last. The pair are discovered and have to return to the city, to once again deal with the nightmare of living in a cruelly divided world. As viewers, we have our own problem to deal with: a programme that wants to be a chilling fable, a talking point, a shaming call to action, but is, sadly, none of those things, because it’s too confused in its intentions and too poorly executed.
