Anything with Marlon James’ name on it is worth getting excited about and Get Millie Black is no exception.
Already an acclaimed HBO show in the US, the crime drama lands on Channel 4 this week with a screenplay from the Booker Prize-winning ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’ writer.
Set in London and Kingston, Jamaica, and gradually unpicking a knotty world of corruption and conspiracy, touched by homophobia and the legacy of colonialism, it’s already a critical hit Stateside. ‘A deeply engaging world of characters driven by their unbridled impulses and haunted by ghosts they can’t exorcise’ is how Variety describes it.
What is Get Millie Black about?
Tamara Lawrance plays Millie-Jean Black, a Jamaican-born London detective whose fall from favour at Scotland Yard sees her return to the Caribbean and get a job on the missing persons department of the Jamaican Police Force. (The character is based on James’s own mum, Detective Inspector Shirley Dillon-James).
Game of Thrones’ Joe Dempsie is Luke Holborn, a London detective sent to Jamaica on a separate investigation. He crosses paths with Black and her partner Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) when their search into a missing girl taps into a wider conspiracy.
Black’s transgender sister Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), meanwhile, is living a hardscrabble life in a mozzie-infested Kingston storm drain known as ‘the Gully’. Here, the city’s marginalised queer and trans community, the so-called Sunshine Ladies, has made a home. Right from the opening episode, the dangers they face are laid bare.
Where was Get Millie Black filmed?
Kingston, Jamaica
The production spent three months’ filming on location in the Jamaican capital, taking in locations across the city. ‘When people think of a Caribbean crime, they might think of Death in Paradise,’ says writer Marlon James. ‘[But] it’s complicated, it’s dark, it’s sexy, it’s mysterious. You get the entire cross section of Jamaican society, but it is set in Kingston. It is a city noir. It is what LA is to Chinatown.’
According to Jamaica Observer, the cast and crew filmed on Sherlock Crescent, a neighbourhood in the city’s north west famous as a dancehall heartland. Hunt’s Bay Police Station, Braemar Avenue and Ravinia Road were other Kingston locations used.
Other Jamaican locations included the Hellshire Hills next to the neighbouring town of Portmore, St Catherine.
‘Most tourists land there, disembark the plane and jump straight on the minibus to a Sandals resort,’ says Dempsie, ’but Kingston is a vibrant, working city that’s constantly on the move and where music is omnipresent’.
London, England
For the show’s London scenes, the production mainly turned to locations in East London, using car parks and industrial estates in and around Canning Town and Hackney. Brunel University stood in for one of the police stations. Famously, the Uxbridge uni’s brutalist buildings appear in A Clockwork Orange.
Who stars in the series?
Lawrance, the star of Jimmy McGovern’s Time in 2021, plays the title character, a London detective now working back in the city of her birth: Kingston, Jamaica.
Transgender Jamaican actress Chyna McQueen plays her trans sister, and Andor’s Gershwyn Eustache Jnr is her partner Curtis.
Newcomer Shernet Swearine plays the missing girl they’re tracking down, with Peter John Thwaites starring as the wealthy older man she’d been mixed up with. Enter Games of Thrones’ Joe Dempsie as Superintendent Luke Holborn, a hotshot London cop who flies out to help uncover a wider criminal conspiracy.
How can I watch Get Millie Black?
The first episode airs on C4 at 9pm on Wednesday, March 5. Episode 2 lands at the same time on Thursday 6, with further episodes airing on Wednesday and Thursday week, before the finale on Wednesday March 19.
You can watch the whole series on Channel 4’s streaming platform once the first episode has aired.
US viewers can watch the whole show on Max now.
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