Three Little Birds opens with a blast of joy. The sun is shining, the sea is blue and the air is full of the sound of goodbyes. It’s in 1957 and thousands of hopefuls are setting sail from Jamaica to London in the hopes of bettering their lives. As a jaunty trumpet tune starts up, the island recedes from view.
Smash cut to Britain: it’s grey, it’s miserable and it’s about as far from the promised land as anyone could imagine.
Lenny Henry’s new ITV series certainly pulls no punches when it comes to detailing the ugly truth of this immigrant story. Inspired by the story of his own mother Winifred – herself a Windrush arrival – as well as that of thousands others, Three Little Birds feels like a natural evolution from August in England, his one-man show about the Windrush Scandal which ran at the Bush Theatre in west London earlier this year.
In that, Henry played the title role of August, a man looking back on his 50-odd years living in Britain after arriving in the country aged eight. That was set in the present day; this series (which was written and created by Henry) winds the clock back to that moment of arrival and introduces us to Leah, Chantrelle and Hosanna (Rochelle Neil, Saffron Coomber and Yazmin Belo) – two sisters and the woman they’re bringing to marry their brother.
As we find out, all of them have their own reasons for leaving. Leah is fleeing an abusive husband, Chantrelle wants to be a movie star and Hosanna has been lured across the ocean by the promise of marriage (Henry also makes a cameo as her slightly dodgy pastor father).
For all of them, it’s an opportunity for a fresh start, but unpleasant awakenings abound. Chantrelle, who finds work as a nanny, is preyed upon by her lecherous employer (Arthur Darvill, wonderfully detestable) in her pursuit of movie stardom; Leah and Hosanna find themselves caught up in a perfect storm of racism that feels unnervingly familiar to the current climate – from the infamous ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ signs to outright attacks, violence lurks around every corner. At one point, Leah finds herself literally being hunted through the back alleys of her new home by a group of angry, white Teddy boys – easily one of the series’ more shocking moments.
As Hosanna says, "They never want us here, why they send recruiters to Jamaica, begging us to come?” But there is joy here, too, and Henry’s script nimbly fills in the finer details of these women’s lives: the impromptu house party for brand new arrivals they attend in London; the romances and new friends; the kindness of strangers in the face of that overwhelming hostility. Neil in particular deserves praise for her portrayal of Leah, flicking from strident and furious to vulnerable with just a movement of her eyes.
Cast, script; it’s all masterfully done, and if Henry’s plotting is sometimes a little too indulgent when it comes to his use of flashbacks (interesting as they are, they bog down the action rather), who can blame him? This is a timely and well-told reminder of the sacrifices the Windrush generation made to come here and their resilience in not only surviving, but thriving – achievements we should be celebrating more.
