Boom time for anti-racist TV: how an £84 bottle of wine triggered change

One afternoon in 1984, Farrukh Dhondy went for lunch and found Jeremy Isaacs had ordered an £84 bottle of wine to persuade him to become Channel 4’s commissioning editor. Dhondy resisted—“For God’s sake, I’m not an office job man,” he said—but a conversation with CLR James changed his mind.

For the next 13 years he helped drive a radical wave of British TV that funded ethnic minority storytelling in a way not seen before or since; the BFI season Constructed, Told, Spoken will screen archival episodes that tell that counter-history. Before this shift, much programming aimed at communities of colour was assimilationist.

BBC Hindi shows such as Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan and Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye focused on fitting into British life and, Dhondy says, could be “extremely patronising,” with BBC and ITV sitcoms like Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language mocking accents and cultures.

United Kingdom

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