Why I Loved BBC’s Boarders
Daniel Taylor Lawrence’s comedy proves that lightning can strike twice
If you’ve read my previous piece about Timewasters, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of the sci-fi comedy penned by writer and co-star Daniel Lawrence Taylor. I go into a lot of (maybe too much) detail about just how much I loved the writing, performances, and general tone of the show, along with my respect for the restraint that Taylor showed in choosing to portray racism in a way that was funny to Black viewers as opposed to focusing on cheap Black trauma to satiate white audiences.
So when I heard that Taylor would be creating a new series, I had pretty high expectations for it. There was something about the confident, precise character and comedic writing of Timewasters that made me confident that Daniel Lawrence Tayor sees British comedy the same way that Pep sees football, so I was pretty much sold from the start. (The initial line here was “the way Daniel Caesar sees music” but felt that that might be a lil too subjective, idk let me know if I’m wrong there)
And yeah…
Boarder is f*ckin great man.
The premise is both strong and simple. After a video of some private school pricks abusing a homeless man (something that’s actually happened in modern Britain) goes viral, the school desperately attempts to save face by offering scholarships to five underprivileged, talented Black teenagers. Our fab five are the short-tempered snow bunny lover Jaheim (Josh Tedeku), the secret-society-obsessed sweet-natured nerd Omar (Myles Kamwendo), the charismatic multi-lingual entrepreneur Toby, the anti-Kemi Badenoch Leah (Jodie Campbell), and Femi (Aruna Jalloh) who is… Nigerian? I don’t really know what that kid’s deal is, to be honest.
Throughout the six-episode BBC series, we see our protagonists try to navigate the hostile and prejudiced private school environment, being forced to grapple with holding onto a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity while staying true to themselves in an environment that just doesn’t quite know how to handle them as people. We see them deal with the racism and classism of their peers and staff, clashing with the rigidity of an elite system that defies slave owners, and try to maintain their loyalty to each other while also making the most of their new surroundings.
It’s a really entertaining and thought-provoking show that gives us compelling characters, a complex and layered world, and a scathing satire of the bizarre conventions of the elites.
So let’s get into it.
The Scholarship Five
Easily my favourite thing about Boarders is our five protagonists who manage to be as interesting and entertaining alone as they are as a group. For the first few minutes, Taylor (who cleverly plays their mentor who works with them and recommends them for the scholarships) makes the smart choice of essentially looking into the camera and telling us “They might not look like it to some, but each of these kids has something special.”
It’s honestly a masterclass in how to introduce characters, showing us that each of our protagonists has more to them than meets the eye. We see Toby using his gift for languages to outsmart a sus shop owner, Leah fearlessly walking into a coffee shop and politely calling it out for being the harbinger of inner-city gentrification; Omar’s talent for (homoerotic) art; Femi… being Nigerian (although his dad absolutely is not judging by that accent); and most intriguingly Jaheim being part of a group that hunts down and assaults someone while filming it on his phone (a parallel?) We’re shown that each of these characters has qualities that make them worthy of a place at St Gilbert's, but by depicting these qualities in the context of an average day for various Black teens in London, it cleverly sets us up to see the potential in them and implicitly questions the arbitrary and bigoted nature of how the elites have created this separation in society.
What I enjoy most about our main five is that the show establishes their layers incredibly quickly, and because of this, there’s a certain unpredictability and complexity to their actions for the rest of the show. Similar to the characters in Timewasters, no one is pigeon-holed as “the straight man/woman”, every character has their moments of being the voice of reason while also being stupid, clumsy, or selfish, and that helps to make them feel like real people as opposed to lazily-drawn character archetypes.
Leah, one of my favourite characters, could’ve easily been the overly preachy pro-Black stick in the mud whose role in the narrative is to speak the moral message to the camera while other characters treat her as nothing more than an annoyance, but the show avoids this lazy trope. Instead, she is allowed to make mistakes, to be wrong, and to have her own motives questioned rather than being forced to be “the sensible one” as so many female characters are when they’re surrounded by their male counterparts.
While each of our five protagonists gets their time to shine and the performances each bring more than their fair share to the table, by far my favourite is Sekou Diaby’s Toby. Diaby’s performance is endlessly funny and charismatic while he does a great job of portraying the more sensitive and world-weary side of a character who seems unconcerned with taking himself seriously in an environment that he doesn’t deem deserving of it. Of the five he’s probably the most dynamic, meaning that he’s able to duck in and out of other people’s storylines while also maintaining his own.
The Arbitrary Weirdness of Posh People
If I had to nail down some of the biggest problems facing Britain today (other than the fact that simply by living on this island, you are in far too close proximity to Lawrence Fox) it would be that both the political class and the media organizations that should but don’t hold politicians to account are filled to the brim with posh weirdos. Boarders works as a clever satire of this conundrum by scathingly depicting the kind of private school that serves as an incubator for the David Camerons of the world, and showing just how bigoted, creepy, and vicious these people are both to those who are different from them, but also to each other.
Rupert, the antagonist towards Jaheim and later Omar, is a great example of how Taylor approaches posh people in this world. Rupert is a bully, a bigot, and is desperate for you to know that he’s not gay even though much of his screen time is spent each getting his own d*ck out or drawing attention to someone else’s. Throughout the series, there are hints that Rupert might be more sympathetic than meets the eye, and when he’s paired with Omar, there’s the fear that Taylor might pursue the lazy trope of having the (Black) gay character humanize the bully and sacrifice their own happiness to provide therapy for this homophobic prick. However, while it does seem like Omar reveals a less awful side to Rupert, it’s still made clear to him that although he’s a complex character with a slightly sympathetic backstory, Rupert does still actively choose to be a piece of sh*t. I use Rupert as the example here because I think he’s a fascinating depiction of just how arbitrary and unnecessary the miserable viciousness of the elites is. Do they have problems? Sure. But many of the problems they face are often due to ridiculous and often weird conventions and behaviours that they choose to adhere to.
For me, the school’s headteacher is another example of this. While there is some sympathy for the fact that he’s just trying to keep his job, he’s still just using these Black teens, and instead of engaging with the change their presence necessitates, he stubbornly sticks to convention when he has every opportunity to change the system. While there are hints that he genuinely wants our protagonists to succeed — especially Jaheim — the bulk of his motivation for doing anything remotely progressive comes from PR management, and anytime he’s given a chance to actually change the system, he’s held back by a fear of change and his misguide devotion to (racist and elitist) tradition, much like the country at large. Some might argue that he can’t change the system because of his fear of losing his job, but he doesn’t exactly thrive from sticking to it, does he? Yes, he suffers, and yes he has a mixed daughter and an invisible Black wife who fulfills the modern writing purpose of letting us know that there’s more to him, but at every turn, he has the choice to break convention and embrace the change that he’s so determined to control, and he refuses.
Through nuanced and multi-layered writing, Boarders goes above its means and provides some interesting food for thought about the way that class and tradition hold this country back. Even more impressively, it does all of this while being reeeeally funny.
The Humour
There’s something about being young in this Britain that just lends itself so perfectly to comedy. With shows like Skins, The Inbetweeners, Bad Education, or even Misfits, for me, British writers have done a fantastic job of capturing the energy, the vulgarity, and the general aimlessness, but also the wit and sardonism that comes with growing up in Britain.
Boarders is full of humour that can be goofy as hell but also extremely clever and unique. Some laughs derive from simply pointing out how weird posh people are like our protags spending an entire episode hearing about the “running of the bulls” only to realize that they misheard when they see naked white boys (and one Nigerian) running around the school. A lot of the jokes come from subverting our expectations of the characters and taking them out of their comfort zones, whether it’s Leah getting drunk and throwing up on a boy, Toby getting a taste of his own medicine and letting the terrifyingly-small Yelena use his own assumptions against him or Omar deciding to pull a prank and accidentally drawing genitals on the headmaster’s favourite pitch.
The rest of the comedy just comes from the witty writing and from allowing the actors to show off their brilliant comedic timing and the chemistry that they all have with each other. Probably the funniest moment for me is Femi’s Yoruba breakdown under mild interrogation, Aruna Jalloh does a great job of selling his character's hilarious despair and the whole scene acts as both a funny and satisfying pay-off for his character arc (is he supposed to be the only African in the group? Coz if so that’s just as hilarious, look at the facial features of his male friends and tell me those ain’t African boys).
Throughout both Timewasters and Boarders, Daniel Lawrence Taylor and his team define the characters, their quirks, and their oddities perfectly, meaning that the talented cast has ample opportunity to be their funniest selves; but this doesn’t come at the expense of a little drama.
The Heart
It’s interesting that I mostly heard Boarders sold as a comedy in the lead-up to its release, because, while it is undoubtedly funny, there are just as many moments of genuine melancholy, discomfort, and earnestness as there are laughs; letting you know that there are emotional stakes that come with how our protagonists fit into this new world.
Much of the emotional investment for me comes from Jaheim’s story, as the stakes for his success are set early on and he’s the character whose backstory is the most fleshed-out. The writing and Taduko’s performance mesh perfectly to create an engaging character arc where Jaheim tries to juggle the weight of expectations that come with this new opportunity and his desire to stay true to himself, his friends back home, and his constant urge to fight back against people who are playing with different rules.
We see him rely too heavily on his old way of doing things rather than embracing the change in his life like Troy in High School Musical, and we see him ignore his friends to try and take advantage of the opportunities afforded to him by his new surroundings like Troy in High School Musical 2. But it’s only when he’s able to rely on his friends and balance these new parts of his life that he’s able to experience happiness, like Troy in High School Musical 3: Senior Year. (I’m probably gonna edit this part out, or maybe I’ll just end up watching the HSM movies again, who knows with me…)
Boarders is full of entertaining and heartfelt subplots that show the complex and 3-dimensional nature of the world and its characters. Omar’s attempt to empathize with Rupert, Leah’s run-in with a young David Lammy, Toby’s interactions with Abby, Jaheim’s struggles to fit in, and Abby’s struggles with her identity are all great individual stories that provide both humour and heart for us.
With all that being said, Boarders isn’t perfect, there are some aspects of it that I’m not super keen on or parts that I wish were explored more. I’m not particularly moved by Jaheim’s romantic life, especially considering her opening line to him and my general ambivalence towards “we’re from two worlds” pairings like this. There are definitely a few storylines that don’t hit as hard as others and I’m guessing we’ll have to wait until season 2 (don’t be stupid, BBC) to learn exactly what the function of a Femi is. However the series’ pros far outweigh its cons, it’s a funny, heartwarming, sometimes uncomfortable triumph for Daniel Lawrence Taylor, the cast, and the crew.
