Small Island

Andrea Levy's award-winning novel Small Island is perfect fodder for adaptation and thankfully this task is one that the BBC excels at. splitting the narrative over two episodes into a three hour epic.

The lives of four disparate characters - Hortense, Queenie, Gilbert and Bernard - clash together in post Second World War London, but structurally each individual's perspective is further explored to explain just how each of them came to be sharing the same house.

Hortense (Naomie Harris) is the least sympathetic character since she sees herself superior to her surroundings. Supplanted from her native Jamaica into a loveless marriage of convenience on the other side of the world is hardly going to signal the start of a rosy relationship and RAF veteran Gilbert (David Oyelowo) doesn't get off to the best of starts by accidentally flinging a used chamber pot in her direction. Landlady Queenie (Ruth Wilson) is similarly stymied in a frictionless romance with plain serviceman Bernard (a typically solid Benedict Cumberbatch) and finds the infusion of a new culture (and new man) entirely refreshing.

Ashley Walters continues to successfully shake his So Solid Crew beginnings with another impressive performance, this time as the radical thinking son of Hortense’s guardian Mr Philip, whose biblical tub-thumping proves a catalyst of the typical rebellion that such stringent control engenders.

However, the main issue with the piece as a whole is the fractured style of the storytelling. With the story ping-ponging between the four protagonists, proceedings have little opportunity to settle and Hugh Quarshie's portentous voiceover makes the fatal error of either telling us exactly what is occurring on the screen or serving us up facile platitudes: "Human nature is full of surprises" - isn't it just.



Released on DVD on 7th June 2010 by ITV Studios Home Entertainment.

Reviewed by Simon Cole.