Black and White in Colour is a British Film Institute production, directed by the Black British filmmaker, Isaac Julien. It examines both the sociopolitical context and on-screen developments, and in so doing, it effectively traces the shifts and contours of Black British television history. The documentary, which uses rare archive footage, is narrated by the scholar Stuart Hall and includes interviews with actors, actresses, cultural critics, directors, and other key players in the making of Black British television history.

The first part of Black and White in Colour begins by noting Black American performers’ contribution to British variety in the 1930s and 1940s. American entertainers such as Adelaide Hall, Buck and Bubbles, and Elisabeth Welch were some of the first images on TV that British people saw of Black people. Compared to other genres, light entertainment was significantly advanced in celebrating Black performers such as Harry Belafonte and Shirley Bassey. Black and White in Colour goes on to discuss how the image of Black person as social problem was developed in the postwar years, particularly in news and documentary programming. The late 1950s saw the emergence of some innovative drama focused on race and the Black British experience—for example, John Elliot’s A Man from the Sun (1956) and John Hopkin’s Fable (1965). What Black and White in Colour highlights is that most pre-1970s programming quite clearly spoke about and referred to Black people but this population was not directly addressed.

The second part of Black and White in Colour concentrates on Black representation on British television from 1962 to 1992. It begins by describing how Enoch Powell and his 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech influenced perceptions of Black British people. The most popular program on British television at this time was Johnny Speight’s sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, which, although it rarely featured Black characters, gave space to the blatantly racist views of Alf Garnett (often described as Powell’s alter-ego). Black and White in Colour points out that, generally speaking, the first part of the 1970s was an uncreative time in terms of images of Blackness. A number of situation comedies during the 1970s, such as Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language, and Mixed Blessings, claimed that they were diffusing racial tension by laughing at racism, but in fact these shows developed their own set of racist stereotypes. During the same period, the first programs that featured predominantly Black casts be-gan to emerge. Empire Road (1978–79) was the first Black soap opera to be made for British television screens. Black and White in Colour also examines off-screen developments at this time, when many Black artists were beginning to complain and campaign for better roles on television. For example, the Equity’s Coloured Artists Committee was established in 1974. In 1979 the Campaign against Racism in the Media critically assessed television’s representation of race in It Ain’t Half Racist Mum.

Black and White in Colour examines the impact of Channel 4 and the Black British independent film movement on Black cultural representation during the 1980s. Black programming was built into the structure of Channel 4, which began in 1982. Subsequently, Black audiences were offered their own magazine programs, such as Eastern Eye and Black on Black and comedies such as No Problem!, Tandoori Nights, and Desmond’s. The specifically Black programs of the 1980s spurred a number of debates about Black audiences, race, and television.

Although Black and White in Colour traces a history that reveals an improvement in images of Blackness on British television since 1936, the analysis makes it clear that representations of Black people remained far from perfect and that many of the early patterns were still apparent. In that sense, the two-part documentary is more a retrospective than a celebration. Most importantly perhaps, Black and White in Colour manages to illustrate how much Black artists and practitioners have had to struggle to gain access to the British television institution.