Sent to London by her abusive mother as a child, we meet Millie once she’s returned to Jamaica after her mum’s death. Desperate to reconnect with her beloved brother Orville, she finds her sibling has transitioned while she’d been away. Now Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), Millie’s sister exists on the margins of society, selling sex and sleeping rough in one of the town’s open-air gullies. Millie – who regularly bribes guards to free Hibiscus from jail – wants the sisters to live together in their childhood home, but Hibiscus is less than keen. As Millie explains in a voiceover: “Mama’s ghost has kept Hibiscus out of here.”
Gershwyn Eustache Jnr as Curtis (Photo: Channel 4)
Millie is also busy with the case of 15-year-old Janet Fenton, last seen getting into a flashy car with an older white man. With her beau identified as local scion Freddy Somerville – “a rich boy who love f**king ghetto girls,” according to Curtis – he and Millie head to the Somerville family home, where Kingston’s race and class hierarchy is laid bare. “You trespassin’,” hisses Freddy’s father, having made it clear he could end Millie’s career with just one phone call. As her voiceover puts it: “Behind every old white family is the ghost of a slave.”
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Ex-Londoner Millie, for instance, frequently moves between languages depending on who she is talking to. Ducking into the Somervilles’ kitchen to speak to a reticent black housemaid, Millie slips into Patois and spits in the jug of lemonade the maid is preparing for her wealthy white employers. Her code-switching pays off – when the maid reveals that Janet was probably pregnant, Millie and Curtis find a potential motive. Could Freddy have done away with Janet to hide the evidence of their affair?
Joe Dempsie as Luke (Photo: Channel 4)While a line or two pushes the script into on the nose territory – “you here to colonise our case?” quips Millie to a white officer drafted in from Scotland Yard – James’ writing is overwhelmingly smart and surprising. Coupled with stellar performances, especially from Lawrance and McQueen, Get Millie Black is as far from the bog-standard police procedural as Jamaica’s Kingston is from London.
‘Get Millie Black’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4
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