Skip to content
Noughts And Crosses sees white people (Noughts) under the oppression of black people (Crosses), given how the world has gone in an opposite to real life slavery over the years.
From the very premise, it sounds like a drama version of Goodness Gracious Me – a series where we got the point within five minutes, but has this got more strings to its bow?
No interracial contact is allowed, and things take a nasty turn very early on, causing even further divisions between blacks and whites, not least when the former refer to the latter as “blankers”.
Naturally, there’s a black female Prime Minister, while whites have to queue up for day labouring, and there’s a statue of a black woman next to the London Gherkin, the same height and in a pose like the Statue of Liberty.
At the heart of it, and the divisions are Sephy Hadley (Masali Baduza) and Callum McGregor (Jack Rowan). She’s black, he’s white, and he’s also aiming to get into the army which will put him as an equal between the two sides.
However, in the final analysis from the first episode, what we have is a very generic-feeling role reversal drama with nothing in its locker, since while the two leads are alright, as a drama, it’s dull and predictable to the last.
Noughts And Crosses is available on the BBC iPlayer with the entire series available to stream in full, now.
You can pre-order this series on DVD, ahead of its release on April 13th.
Also available is the novel by Marjorie Blackman.
Score: 1/10
Director: Julian Holmes
Producer: Johann Knobel
Writer: Lydia Adetunji, Toby Whithouse, Malorie Blackman, Rachel De-Lahay, Nathaniel Price
Novel: Malorie Blackman
Cast:
Sephy Hadley: Masali Baduza
Callum McGregor: Jack Rowan
Meggie McGregor: Helen Baxendale
Kamal Hadley: Paterson Joseph
Jack Dorn: Shaun Dingwall
Jude McGregor: Josh Dylan
Lekan Baako: Jonathan Ajayi
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.