“Not Another Hood Show!” The Weird Way We Discuss Black Media

Are Black Brits really bogged down by “gang stories” or is our frustration slightly misplaced?

While I was taking a well-earned break from writing (had writer’s block), I took this as an opportunity to explore ideas for topics that I would maybe want to write about in the future.

Ideas like a piece comparing and contrasting the earnest rom-com greatness of Rye Lane (which you should watch) with the cynical formulaic meh-fest that is Anyone But You; a ranking of my favourite Straw Hat pirates (you’d be surprised); a critique of the MCU’s Wakanda and its overly-western ideals of justice; and a slightly more abstract one about liberal too-farism in The Legend of Korra and Falcon & The Winter Soldier (need to workshop this one).

But of all the ideas I’d been thinking of, the one that I came closest to writing (still might) was an analysis of the debate between two characters from American Fiction: Monk and Sintara.

The reason I tell you this is because while pondering this particular argument, I thought about what it means to tell an authentic story, I thought about respectability politics, but most of all, I thought about representation (if you want to know my thoughts on this debate, stay tuned… maybe). It was while pondering these things that I noticed the trailer for Rapman’s hotly anticipated series Supacell, a story about a group of Black South Londoners who suddenly develop superpowers.

The trailer looks great, and I’m hoping it’ll be the best Black superhero content we’ve gotten since season two of Netflix's Luke Cage (which was f*ckin’ great stop yelling at me). But what really caught my eye, was the reactions.

You see, while many people had been eagerly anticipating this project and therefore expressed excitement and positivity, there was a certain flavour of reaction that I found to be… Hm.

Here’s a broad example:

That’s right, our favourite old critique “Too many hood shows!” reared its tired face again. This has, rightly or wrongly, been an age-old complaint among Black audiences across the Atlantic.

It’s the idea that the most prevalent creative representation that Black performers and writers get nowadays is in “hood movies and shows” which — for the sake of this piece — is the term I’ll be using to describe projects that depict us as drug dealers, thugs, criminals, absent fathers, women-beaters, Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, and other general negative stereotypes that we’ve historically been associated with both on and off-screen. The consequence of this has been a somewhat knee-jerk reaction where we take to social media to decry the lack of variety in our depictions both when we see another project that fits this description or, more strangely, when we see one that doesn’t.

So here’s my thing:

As someone who works in the creative industry, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it can be for creatives of colour to pitch art that truly explores the vast breadth of our creativity and allows us to see ourselves in a variety of weird and wonderful stories. I’ve written at least two previous pieces alluding to the lack of diversity (both of race and class) in executive media positions and I’ve spoken at length about how tired I am of seeing specific kinds of depictions of Black people on film, TV and a lot of the sh*t Donald Glover makes (namely Black people in pain or displaying strength through suffering).

There is genuine frustration from other Black creatives that their ideas often aren’t taken seriously unless they pander to depictions of Blackness that white commissioners are used to/comfortable with (I started to write about this in another piece comparing American Fiction to Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Adjani Salmon’s Dreaming Whilst Black but yeah… writer’s block). Black actors have also previously expressed very valid frustration at being constantly offered roles that promote negative stereotypes.

With all that being said, however:

Can someone please name me some recent Black British shows and films that have centered around stereotypes of gangs, guns, the road, crime, and the hood in general?

Off the top of my head, I thought of Rapman’s 2019 feature film Blue Story, recent seasons of Top Boy, the 2023 film Gassed Up, and 2016's Brotherhood.

There’s probably more that I’ve missed but even the fact that I can’t quite think of all that many kinda says something. I even did some digging and searched through IMDb films and series with the tag “Black British” and my main takeaway was that Black actors seem to play feds almost as much as they play thugs these days.

Especially Ashley Walters.

Not sure what to do with that revelation, to be honest.

Good on him I guess?

Anyway, if you were to ask me to think of Black British projects that *aren’t* centered primarily around gangs and drugs? Well…

*Deep breath*

Timewasters, Boarders, Riches, Champion, Domino Day, I May Destroy You, Chewing Gum, Famalam, Enterprice, Hood Documentary, The Kitchen, Black Ops, Red Flag, Dreaming Whilst Black, Big Age, Rye Lane, Small Axe, Pirates, The Weekend, Sliced, Bloods, Pretty Red Dress, Little Darlings (Lemar and Jamelia onscreen together guys, come on now), etc etc etc.

I’m also not even including YouTube shows because that’s a whole other essay on the pivotal role that YouTube and social media have played in nurturing creative Black talent until they became too popular for the mainstream to ignore.

Now do I think that the existence of the shows I’ve listed suggests that the British media’s representation problem is fixed? Hell no. You only have to look at Timewasters and see how simply getting the show commissioned wasn’t enough to stop white television executives from interfering with Daniel Lawrence Taylor’s hit sci-fi show (please watch his second show, Boarders, it’s great); forcing white co-writers on him and starving it of the promotion it needed. What I’m suggesting is that perhaps if all you’re seeing of Black people on UK TV is hood shows, you need to think more critically about why that might be.

So if there are so many British shows that don’t relate to the hood, why do people still run with this narrative? Well, there could be a number of reasons for this.

You could put it down to the general trend of rushing to dish out reactionary, generic, well-worn takes on social media in hopes of getting engagement because it *sounds* truthful, regardless of how it tracks with the reality or the nuance of any given situation.

Or this feeling of oversaturation could be from the fact that British broadcasters are sorely lacking when it comes to promoting the Black British shows that do get made. Media executives are taking fewer risks as the industry reels from an advertising crisis but some still want to be seen as promoting diversity; this can mean that they sometimes green-light Black-led fiction but don’t give it the promotional funding or resources to let people know that it’s there. This is why I tend not to lean into the “non-hood Black TV shows are here, you’re just not checking for them” counter-argument, because even I’ll admit that the only reason that I was aware of the shows listed above is that I’m a massive nerd and have many friends and colleagues in the UK media industry who alert me to these projects (e.g. I only found out about Dreaming Whilst Black by literally meeting Adjani Salmon).

A lot of it may come down to the age-old concept of respectability politics, this idea that in order to be respected, accepted, afforded basic opportunities, and not discriminated against, minorities must assimilate into the majority culture and iron out any behaviours within our ranks that might fall below the standards set by a white supremacist society that f*ckin’ hates us regardless of what we do. Think David Lammy spending more time begging to be called English and blaming the riots on single mothers than standing up for his Black female colleagues, or most of the sh*t Black people say either on GB News/on social media in hopes that GB News will notice them and throw them a few crumbs of clout.

Viewed through the lens of respectability politics, any depictions of us as thugs, drug dealers, or human beings with personalities give white people an excuse to see us as those things in real life, therefore we must avoid giving them that excuse (they don’t need it guys, I once got accused of having a ganja addiction because I looked tired in office meetings). If we show “the worst” of Black people on TV then that is how we will be perceived in real life.

There’s also the idea that the existence of too many hood shows will “hold us back”. Be weary brothers and sisters, lest the mere existence of Top Boy inspire young Black children to deal drugs, pick up knives, make drill music, support Jeremy Corbyn or God forbid listen to Jeremy Corbyn’s new drill track about dealing drugs and stabbing motherf*ckrs (it’s called Murder For the Many, look it up on his Soundcloud it’s there, promise).

This politics has been somewhat accentuated by the fact that the UK is currently embroiled in a manufactured culture war egged on by the media establishment, backed up in part by Britain’s least favourite short person Rishi Sunak, and supported by Britain’s second least favourite short person Kier “Wettest of Wipes” Starmer. This culture war now means that traditional media combines with social media to amplify every loud racist they come across; in practice, this means that minorities in this country are constantly made hyper-aware of even the smallest complaints of any bigoted nobody who used to be married to a companion on Doctor Who and is handling the divorce particularly badly. It makes sense that some minorities respond to the war on woke by trying to stamp out any depictions of Black behaviour that don’t make us look inhumanly wealthy, clean-cut, and deferential to a standard of behaviour that even the most aspirational of white people don’t meet.

With all this in mind, I think that my issues with the “Not another hood show!” discourse are pretty straightforward:

The existence of a project that depicts us in the hood is not inherently a bad thing, and to suggest otherwise does a massive disservice to the genre that has given us quality projects like Top Boy and Blue Story. By reducing them to simple hood shows we risk massively simplifying their complex and mature themes, while immediately pigeonholing them and denying them the respect and nuance they deserve as (mostly) high-quality pieces of art. Yes, Top Boy centers around drug dealers, but it was also a cultural phenomenon that used its platform to bolster the careers of phenomenal Black talent both behind and in front of the camera. There’s nothing wrong with being a show about the hood if it’s good.

Why are you praising something by highlighting what it isn’t? That’s weird. Praising Rapman and building hype for Supacell at the expense of previous hood projects roots the discourse in negativity and also connects the non-hood show with the hood genre by association, creating the allusion of oversaturation. Like… why even do this? Do you call your partner good-looking or do you say “Thank God I’m finally with someone who isn’t clapped!”

By sharing such a reductive reaction, we often focus attention on creatives, whether they make hood shows or not, rather than focusing on the executives and structures that make it so hard to create and adequately promote more varied Black-led genres. Why lambast hood shows that aren’t all that prevalent instead of demanding answers to the very real problem of Riches being canceled???

Dushane and Sully are not the reason racists don’t like you. Racists are currently mad that a Black actress won the role of Juliet, maybe one of the most prestigious roles in British history, and Juliet ain’t a thug (although she does famously carry at one point). Hood shows are not what’s holding us back, systemic racism and capitalist patriarchy is.

Suppose a talented writer or actor from an underprivileged background decides to try to tell their story freshly and innovatively. Are we really going to tell them to keep it to themselves because there are “too many stories about the hood”? Don’t be mean.

Anyway, the reason I’m saying all of this is because I believe that it’s becoming more important than ever for Black people to think critically about the Black-led art we consume, and to give constructive, nuanced critiques of it. I’ve written before about the lack of mainstream Black British voices in media reviewing and I believe that a consequence of this is that often the most reactionary viral takes online are the ones that are seen as “our” reaction. That simply isn’t good enough and it doesn’t do us justice.

We need to adapt the way we talk about Black TV and film to suit this new renaissance of creativity and exposure, so perhaps we should start by phasing out old and cliched critiques, or maybe just being a bit more targeted with them.

So maybe the next time you see a brand new Black British show or movie, try not to praise it as “not another hood show”, try to instead focus on judging it positively as its own innovative contribution to the rich and varied history of Black television which includes stories from the hood.

And to be honest, even if another hood show comes out, I’ll still watch it. Gassed Up was really fun. Sanji from Netflix’s One Piece live-action was in it.