White Girl
Monday 10 March
9:00pm - 10:30pm
BBC2
Picture this: an 11-year-old girl with blonde hair and cautious blue eyes washes her face, dons a headscarf and joins in with prayers at her local mosque. As an image of cultural crossover it's hard to beat, and it's at the heart of this luminous, beautifully filmed drama by Abi Morgan (Sex Traffic). The girl is Leah (tremendously played by Holly Kenny) and her family is a wreck. Her stepdad makes her run drug-dealing errands, her mum (Anna Maxwell Martin) drinks and their lives revolve around pizza, scratchcards and one screaming row after another. When mum and kids try to flee, they're re-housed in a Muslim district of Bradford and Leah's redemption begins, with the Islamic culture she comes to embrace shown as a haven of calm after her shambolic upbringing. There's a fairytale quality to the story, but if the idea of the White season (of which this forms part) is to celebrate the white working classes, this feels like a shot in the opposite direction.
RT reviewer - David Butcher
VIDEO Plus+: 1039
Subtitled, Widescreen, Audio-described
Episode written by Abi Morgan
Cast
- Debbie Anna - Maxwell Martin
- Stevie - Daniel Mays
- Sonya - Melanie Hill
- Leah - Holly Kenny
- Adam - Jay Simpson
- Rehan - Tariq Jordan
- Yasmin - Jade Islam
- Abdullah - Aaron Neil
- Fatima - Balvinder Sopal
- Headmistress - Joanna Swain
- Miss Shakina - Shaida Choudhary
- Mr Iqbal - Mohammad Rafique
- Housing officer - Perveen Hussain
- Malik - Junaid Khan
- Tariq - Hasan Mahmood
- Chip shop man - Paul Oldham