by Daniel Johnson
December 1, 2024
The series presents a look at social tensions present in Jamaica.
“Get Millie Black,” a TV show created by award-winning author Marlon James, has been winning the praise of critics since its debut on Max, HBO’s streaming platform, on Nov. 25.
According to The New York Times, the show focuses on its titular character, portrayed with depth and gravitas by Tamara Lawrence.
Black is an investigator who follows her moral compass, often against the wishes of her superiors, but her instincts are more often than not, right.
Black’s childhood, which viewers are introduced to in the opening moments of the show, is traumatic. She is sent away from her native Jamaica to London after she stops her abusive mother from beating her brother Orville.
Black believes that her brother has died, but Orville is actually revealed to be a trans woman who now goes by Hibiscus.
Hibiscus is very much alive, but as the first episode makes clear, is almost always in some form of peril.
The case that leads Black to reunite with her sibling is a missing persons case, a teenage girl goes missing, and during the course of the investigation, a much more sprawling conspiracy begins to unravel, which places Black in contact with her sister, Hibiscus.
The five-episode limited series “Get Millie Black” will air new episodes each Monday until its season finale.
Critic Isabella Soares at Collider described the series in her review as a “brutal look at rampant crime, racism, and other social constraints,” this, in part is laid bare through Black’s examination of the missing persons case, which leads to a wealthy, white, and powerful figure in Kingston.
According to Soares’ review, the series presents a look at social tensions present in the underbelly of Jamaica, which other shows often do not explore with authenticity.
“Overall, ‘Get Millie Black’ is an intense watch and a rare look at the societal tensions in Jamaica’s underworld, which are rarely brought to light in the way that they are here. With several Caribbean cast and crew members involved in this production, including directors Tanya Hamilton and Annetta Laufer, there is a lot of thought into making the series authentic to the country’s culture and its conflicts.”
Daniel Fienberg at The Hollywood Reporter describes in his review how even though the crime drama has been done an infinite number of times, there are ways to bring freshness to a stale formula.
Fienberg also brings home the motivations for James to have the series reflect as authentically as possible the conditions of his home country.
“James, who was born and raised in Kingston by a detective mother, is invested in getting this milieu right, down to the sense of what it means to try to enforce the law in a land where the laws were designed to repress a colonized people. The drama is most potent when it’s exploring what it’s like for your entire identity to be criminalized, as seen in Hibiscus’ efforts toward self-actualization within a culture that forces her to literally live in a gutter, or the relationship between Curtis and his husband in a country where same-sex intimacy faces social and potentially legal sanctions.”
James, a queer man himself, told Deadline that it was also important to him to showcase the rich lives of queer people in Jamaica.
“While we are not shying away from the cruelty that our queer people experience, we also wanted to show the richness of their lives,” James said. “Some of their most important scenes are some of the lightest.”
Lawrence, meanwhile, believes that her character is an essential portrayal of what an ally for the queer community in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean could look like.
“I just thought for Jamaica this is going to be huge, Millie’s allyship was very powerful and important as an adjunct to the storylines. She is what other people in Jamaican society could be in terms of the steps forward that the Caribbean could be taking,” Lawrence told Deadline.
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