This week the BBC released Mr Loverman, an eight-part drama that features two septuagenarian Caribbean Londoners who have been engaged in a homosexual love affair since they were teens in Antigua. Perhaps you think nothing of this. But a series with scenes depicting two Black, greying men reflecting on their forbidden romance, declaring themselves “cocksuckers”, and bending themselves into sexual positions occupying a primetime Monday evening slot is worth reflection. Not purely because of discussions about the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality on a generation of Black men, but also the specificity of this drama – the freedom for Black British television to be what it wants to be.
That the show is an adaptation of Booker-prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s novel would have helped it over the line of “marketability”, not to mention the all-star cast of Lennie James, Ariyon Bakare, and Sharon D Clarke. But the idea that Mr Loverman could find a billing and an audience has never been a given. Particularly since the show is not about the interplay between Windrush-era migrants with a hostile, white society but a more complex and internal exploration of the Black family, class mobility, and secrets. Evaristo herself had been told on publication that Mr Loverman was too “niche” for TV.
