Black Earth Rising, episode 1
I watched the first episode of Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick’s contemporary drama (thriller?) about the effects of the Rwandan genocide, last night. (Oh yes, it’s autumn drama season on the Beeb.) I may be scrabbling for silliness soon.
This is heavy. The main characters are Harriet Walter’s Eve, a prosecutor (of war crimes), who rescued and adopted Michaela Coel’s Kate from the genocide - Kate doesn’t remember her name or anything from that period, but carries physical and mental scars. Their relationship is put under (more?) strain when Eve takes on the job of prosecuting a (very angry) Tutsi soldier who was seen as his people’s saviour in the genocide, but is accused of doing bad things in the Democratic Republic of Congo subsequently. Kate made the valid point that the people who committed genocide ought to be prosecuted first and that doing this would hurt her and other Tutsi survivors.
Eve and her colleague/boss (John Goodman) let slip that there were Reasons, related to Kate, but about more, why they were going after this chap, with the current Rwandan Government’s limited support, but a lot of American support. We’ll see if it all becomes clearer in the end and if Kate is satisfied with why they did what they did. (From my memories of ‘The Honourable Woman’, it ended on a bonkers note that was not as satisfying as it thought it was being.)
All I feel qualified to say is that maybe having your adult daughter live with you (in a cleverly selected living space that’s all multiple levels and modern décor and lots of light) and work in your chambers (Kate is a legal investigator) isn’t the best of ideas. Apart from the nepotism of the latter, it’s a bit co-dependant, regardless of the fact that Kate is depressed and has been suicidal. Eve maybe thinks it’s time for Kate to stand on her own two feet, but is wavering about Secrets She’s Kept From Her.
It was partly the mother-daughter dynamic that drew me to this, also it felt worthy (but with the topic and the music, it feels like an hour of sitting there all tensed up). I find it less compelling than Bodyguard (which is more about the thrills and spills), but I need compelling to balance out the heaviness. And the sense that I should probably write something considered about my reaction as a white Westerner who was a teenager when the genocide happened to Rwanda, Africa and current conflicts - and whoa that’s a lot for a drama.
So, instead I’ll say I liked when the scenes played with shadow and light, even dissolving effectively into animation. There are other strands to the story, John Goodman’s character’s tragic daughter, what the Americans are up to, what the Rwandans are up to - let alone what happened back then - and a glimpse of how difficult it is to get a hold of the wanted men (and the show mainly features men, Eve and Kate aside) in a subplot involving an irritating UN officer getting things wrong while trying to make up for past failings. There’s a dance between characters going, ‘it isn’t about two sides’ when quite often there are blatantly two sides e.g. prosecution and defence, and the tendency of a drama is to throw two sides against each other for conflict (okay, e.g. the use of ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ as descriptors by characters) when it is often way more complicated than that. The tension between acknowledging that complexity, because I’m sure this has been researched thoroughly, and using binaries for drama is going to be huge for a show tackling this topic.
I literally did not get the final scene. What happened there?
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick with this all the way through.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/346705.html.
This is heavy. The main characters are Harriet Walter’s Eve, a prosecutor (of war crimes), who rescued and adopted Michaela Coel’s Kate from the genocide - Kate doesn’t remember her name or anything from that period, but carries physical and mental scars. Their relationship is put under (more?) strain when Eve takes on the job of prosecuting a (very angry) Tutsi soldier who was seen as his people’s saviour in the genocide, but is accused of doing bad things in the Democratic Republic of Congo subsequently. Kate made the valid point that the people who committed genocide ought to be prosecuted first and that doing this would hurt her and other Tutsi survivors.
Eve and her colleague/boss (John Goodman) let slip that there were Reasons, related to Kate, but about more, why they were going after this chap, with the current Rwandan Government’s limited support, but a lot of American support. We’ll see if it all becomes clearer in the end and if Kate is satisfied with why they did what they did. (From my memories of ‘The Honourable Woman’, it ended on a bonkers note that was not as satisfying as it thought it was being.)
All I feel qualified to say is that maybe having your adult daughter live with you (in a cleverly selected living space that’s all multiple levels and modern décor and lots of light) and work in your chambers (Kate is a legal investigator) isn’t the best of ideas. Apart from the nepotism of the latter, it’s a bit co-dependant, regardless of the fact that Kate is depressed and has been suicidal. Eve maybe thinks it’s time for Kate to stand on her own two feet, but is wavering about Secrets She’s Kept From Her.
It was partly the mother-daughter dynamic that drew me to this, also it felt worthy (but with the topic and the music, it feels like an hour of sitting there all tensed up). I find it less compelling than Bodyguard (which is more about the thrills and spills), but I need compelling to balance out the heaviness. And the sense that I should probably write something considered about my reaction as a white Westerner who was a teenager when the genocide happened to Rwanda, Africa and current conflicts - and whoa that’s a lot for a drama.
So, instead I’ll say I liked when the scenes played with shadow and light, even dissolving effectively into animation. There are other strands to the story, John Goodman’s character’s tragic daughter, what the Americans are up to, what the Rwandans are up to - let alone what happened back then - and a glimpse of how difficult it is to get a hold of the wanted men (and the show mainly features men, Eve and Kate aside) in a subplot involving an irritating UN officer getting things wrong while trying to make up for past failings. There’s a dance between characters going, ‘it isn’t about two sides’ when quite often there are blatantly two sides e.g. prosecution and defence, and the tendency of a drama is to throw two sides against each other for conflict (okay, e.g. the use of ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ as descriptors by characters) when it is often way more complicated than that. The tension between acknowledging that complexity, because I’m sure this has been researched thoroughly, and using binaries for drama is going to be huge for a show tackling this topic.
I literally did not get the final scene. What happened there?
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick with this all the way through.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/346705.html.