The six-episode series sees Sephy and Callum’s relationship grow ever more complicated as they come of age, tackling prejudice and ignorance from their families and the wider world. To have the opportunity to work on something that was, and is, empowering to so many felt like poetry,” he says. “I hadn’t noticed its impact, but, once I read it, I totally understood why it had one. Rowan hadn’t read the book before he was cast, but it quickly made its mark on the actor, best known for roles in Peaky Blinders and the Channel 4 thriller Born to Kill.

Meanwhile, Callum’s family is poverty-stricken, but proud. While Sephy’s family – led by Paterson Joseph as her high-powered politician father – seem to have it all, relations are strained. Such is the timeliness of the show that the grime star Stormzy – a longtime fan of Blackman – also makes a cameo as a newspaper editor, Kolawale, in a role created specifically for the adaptation.īrimah, a newcomer, plays Minerva, the unapologetically black, privileged younger sister of the “cross” protagonist Sephy (Masali Baduza), while Jack Rowan plays Sephy’s childhood friend turned love interest, Callum – a nought trying to make a positive impact on the world despite adversity. In the books, white “noughts” have their names mispronounced, are labelled as gang members or are dismissed as “uppity”. The first book was published two decades ago, but Brexit, Meghxit and the current political regime mean they offer a particularly prescient and vivid representation of what is going on in black people’s minds. Written by one of the country’s most celebrated black female authors, the books dissect the inequalities between black and white Britons by turning them on their head, and imagining a world in which black supremacy is the norm, and Europe lives in the shadow of colonial Africa (renamed “Aprica”).

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman