Noughts + Crosses
Thursday, BBC1
The Trouble With Maggie Cole
Wednesday, ITV
Rating: 
Noughts + Crosses is an adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s novel for young adults, so why it’s being shown on a Thursday at 9pm rather than in the Doctor Who slot, I cannot say. All I can say is that the conceit, which ingeniously flips the race issue, is terrifically interesting – it brings home the absurdity and futility of racism magnificently – whereas plot, character, etc, not so much. Also, you do find yourself longing for an HBO or Sky budget rather than a BBC one. That ‘riot’ was less a ‘riot’, more ‘a bit of a jostle’, and this production was quite let down by all that.
Masali Baduza and Jack Rowan star in Noughts + Crosses. All I can say is that the conceit, which ingeniously flips the race issue, is terrifically interesting – it brings home the absurdity and futility of racism magnificently – whereas plot, character, etc, not so much
This is set in Britain today but it’s a Britain with an alternative history, as Africa has been the coloniser, and Europeans were the slaves. Even though slavery is over, it’s still a deeply segregated society with a ruling class (black people, known as ‘Crosses’) and an underclass (white people, ‘Noughts’) and Jim Crow-style laws (state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States).
Noughts can’t attend the same schools as Crosses, or the same hospitals, and have the poorest housing and the most rubbish jobs – and as for inter-racial relationships, they are wholly verboten.
The idea is inspired. This is a world where black people lounge around the pool while white gardeners clip bushes in the background. This is a world where ‘flesh-coloured’ plasters are brown and Crosses might have trouble pronouncing a Nought’s name, and a Cross might drive to a Nought area and worry about parking his car: ‘Will the wheels still be on when I get back?’
This is a world where black people lounge around the pool while white people clip bushes in the background
True, it’s not exactly subtle, but it makes you notice what, generally, you don’t notice because you are white – or at least, because I am white – and it is extremely powerful. It also feels like a whisker away from real life – only last week Tesco announced it would now be stocking plasters where flesh coloured didn’t mean pink, only this week! – but, unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, say, it doesn’t find heft elsewhere.
The main characters are teenager Callum McGregor (Jack Rowan), who is a Nought, and his childhood friend Sephy Hadley (Masali Baduza), who is a Cross and daughter of the Home Secretary (Paterson Joseph).
In the opening episode there was police brutality against Noughts, which led to the riot that was a jostle, and there are the beginnings of a Nought uprising, but Sephy and Callum’s star-crossed romance is the nub of the story. Alas.
Sephy, to be fair, had more about her, even if she is only just noticing what the world is like, but Callum, while a dish, as fetishised by the camera – closeups of his face every two minutes, or so it seemed – is completely wet. He wasn’t even awarded one interesting line. Oh God, not him again, I kept thinking. Perhaps it’s an age thing but I was much more intrigued by the adults, particularly Callum’s mother (Helen Baxendale), who is the Hadleys’ housekeeper. How does she cope?
But mostly I was taken by the idea of it, and the London cityscape as dominated by the statue of an African woman with arms reaching out. This was shown multiple times, even though the CGI was so obviously cheap. I guess if you’re going to spend next to nothing on something… you need to get your lack of money’s worth?
The new drama series The Trouble With Maggie Cole seemed worth a try because it wasn’t about mismatched detectives as I’ve had my fill of them. Particularly when the running joke is that one detective can never find his glasses, which are always on top of his head, and which he uses for both distance and near, which is confusing. (See McDonald & Dodds, Sundays, ITV. See also if you can last the duration without calling out, ‘Mate, have you never heard of varifocals?’)
Julie Hesmondhalgh and Dawn French in The Trouble With Maggie Cole. French makes an unlikeable character more likeable than she has any right to be
But back to Maggie (Dawn French), who lives in a fictional West Country village and is a fearful gossip as well as custodian of the local castle. She is thrilled when local radio station Coastland FM wants to interview her, as she is quite full of herself too.
She meets the journalist in the pub and he plies her with G&Ts to loosen her tongue, because that’s what local journalists do to local people (it’s not all reporting on prize-winning marrows, you know) and soon she’s spilling the beans about everybody. But later she can’t recall a thing, so gathers everyone in her garden to listen to the broadcast live.
The local GP’s husband is having an affair, we hear her saying. The local Polish girl will sleep with anybody, we also hear her saying, and the fella who owns the pub has Mafia connections. And so on.
In the show’s defence, French does make an unlikeable character more likeable than she has any right to be. On the other hand, I did want to put in a call to Coastland FM, if only to say: ‘Mate, have you ever heard of libel laws? Have you?’