Lenny Henry’s Three Little Birds has been described by ITV as a “triumphant” and “life-affirming” Windrush drama, celebrating immigration and community. I’m not so sure, because in the first half of this innovative, soap-like miniseries, there’s precious little that feels remotely triumphant.
Cathartic, yes; life-affirming, not so much. Three little birds (I assume a reference to the Bob Marley song), all in their twenties, come to England from Jamaica in 1957. They arrive about a decade after the first wave of the Windrush generation, and thus are able to settle with an established Caribbean community to help them, and before the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act removed the automatic right to settle in the UK as a British (empire) subject.
