What do you think?

[tiana198]

I was flicking through the entertainment news on yahoo when I came across an article where the creator of the new Dr Who series Russell T Davies calls Primeval 'too white'

See the article here

I think this is unfair because even though there are no ethnic minority main characters just yet there have been some in small roles on the show. Does any one

Comments

[lil_shepherd]

Personally, I'd accuse him of tokenism in his own shows, myself. Until Martha - and we don't know what she's like - his one black continuing character has been a total prat, without much to do. What's more, the main characters in his early children shows were all white, too. Come to think of it, the black character in the Sarah Jane Smith pilot was also a prat.

[lil_shepherd]

And as for Tosh!!!!!

[rodlox]

What about Tosh?

wait....did they give Tosh something to do other than stand about and be a plot device?

[lil_shepherd]

You know, I'd completely forgotten Ianto (perhaps he wasn't annoying enough?)

[11nine73]

What an ass. I shall go round his house and slap him.

[tammy_louise]

I can understand why people argue that TV should reflect the multi-racial nature of the country, if only for the sake of realism. But the fact is, whether people like it or not, there are still a lot of white people in this country and there's every chance that a semi-random group of seven people in England could all be white

[noodle_soother]

That's what I wanted to say only better obviously. You're spot on there.

[ladyofastolat]

I just composed a comment in my head, went to post it... and found that you'd just made every one of my points. Doh! Or, in other words: I agree!

[lil_shepherd]

Precisely.

I used to work for Customs and Excise and I remember the universal Departmental reaction to The Knock which was, "Hey, just how many female black SIOs do we have?"

The answer was "Nonish." (At that point we didn't have any black SIOs or any female SIOs either. The situation has changed since then, but...)

[noodle_soother]

That seems rather stupid. It shouldn't matter if it was an all black cast or an all white cast, it's the quality of the show that matters. The world is far too PC these days!

[ladyofastolat]

Lately, I've got the impression that the BBC has issued an edict that "thou shalt have one black actor in every single drama you produce, regardless of whether this makes sense." Recently, I have noticed three or four BBC historical dramas that have cast black actors in roles that would never have been occupied by a black person in the period being depicted. It's happened enough now that I'm sure it must be a deliberate policy decision. It's very well meant, I'm sure, and I expect the BBC would accuse anyone who questions it of being racist, but... but...

Not that this is really relevant to Primeval.

[lil_shepherd]

Not that this is really relevant to Primeval.

Of course not.

Neither is the following (true) story. When the BBC were making the third series of Blake's Seven the fact that Josette Simon (now one of our most distinguished actresses - I've seen her on stage and she is brilliant - then just out of drama school) had been cast as Dayna was kept from the scriptwriters. Why? Because there was a general assumption among scriptwriters at that time that most black actors were just cast because they were black, and not because they were good, and scriptwriters therefore didn't write much for them to do...

Unfortunately, Josette blew all of her really good lines in the first couple of episodes, before the rest of the cast took her in hand and gave her lessons in the art of coarse TV acting...

Which gives us some definite hope for Hannah Spearitt's acting career, because she's better in Primeval than Josette was in B7, by a longish hook... and also goes to show that the Beeb was putting in token black characters even then. (Of course,

[lothy]

I think it's American influence. If you watch big American dramas, there's always one black guy, one Latin American... the difference is, of course, that America has a far bigger percentage of certain minorities than the UK does.

This reminds me somewhat of a (rather silly) post by an American here on LJ where she accused Torchwood of not having enough minority people (obviously a Japanese person wasn't enough for her). The answer most Torchwood fans gave her was, Cardiff is (I believe) 90-something percent white.

[lil_shepherd]

Actually, there should have been complaints that there weren't enough Welsh people. A minority of one in a unit based in their capital city!