British African-Caribbean Community - African-Caribbean Culture in The United Kingdom - Theatre, Television and Mainstream Cinema

Theatre, Television and Mainstream Cinema

Further information: British television and British cinema

The 1970s saw the emergence of independent filmmakers such as Trinidadian-born Horace Ové, the director of Pressure, among others. London's Talawa Theatre Company was founded in the 1985 by Jamaican-born Yvonne Brewster, their first production being based on C. L. R. James's historical account of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins. Since the 1980s, the Blue Mountain Theatre's productions have offered a more earthy style of populist comedy, often bringing over Jamaican artists such as Oliver Samuels.

While Guyanese actor Robert Adams became the first African-Caribbean dramatic actor to appear on British television on 11 May 1938 (in a production of Eugene O'Neill's play The Emperor Jones), African-Caribbean entertainers were first widely popularised on British television broadcasts with the postwar resumption of BBC television in 1946 (pre-war black entertainers on the BBC - the first in the world - had primarily been African-American stars). The profile of African-Caribbean actors on television, such as Lennie James, Judith Jacob and Diane Parish, has widened substantially since 1970s shows such as Love Thy Neighbour (Rudolph Walker) and Rising Damp (Don Warrington) when their role was often to act simply as either the butt of, or foil to, racist jokes by white characters. The most influential programme in moving away from this formula was the 1989–94 Channel Four barbershop sitcom Desmond's, starring Norman Beaton and Carmen Munroe.

One of the biggest African-Caribbean names in comedy is Lenny Henry, who began his career as a stand-up comedian but whose television sketch shows, where he often caricatured Caribbean émigrés, made him popular enough to headline numerous primetime comedy shows from, for instance, Lenny Henry in 1984 to The Lenny Henry Show in 2004. The highest professional achievement by a British African-Caribbean actor to date (2006) was Marianne Jean-Baptiste's 1996 nominations for an Academy Award (Oscar), Golden Globe and British Academy Award (bafta) for her feature-film debut role in Secrets & Lies.

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