Desmond's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxlgw08dgss

The clip above is the first episode of the first season of 'Desmond's', broadcast in 1989. The episode begins with the opening credits, showing footage of black slaves in black and white, implying it was a long time ago, and then modern clips of black and white people friendly communicating, indicating positive relationships between both ethnicities and symbolising the equality that both races have, conveying that racism is a recent topic that has stopped being an issue.

In the actual show, one of the black character's is seen reading The Sun newspaper and Desmond tells them he doesn't want the newspaper in his shop as 'it blames black people for so many things', suggesting that racism was still an issue back then whereas now, the media doesn't portray that particular ethnicity as a negative race anymore, suggesting that in the past 20-30 years, opinions on ethnicity and representation has changed from being negative to more positive as there less negative topics in the media nowadays.

The accent that the characters have is a lot more distinct in the programme then the black ethnicity in London has nowadays, suggesting that the African culture was a recent migrant to the area if they still use dialect and have big relations to their home region.

Below is text from some online articles talking about ethnicity in the show:

Worrell was keen to show that prejudice existed not just between broad ethnic groups, but also within them While Matthew was the frequent butt of jokes from the West Indian characters, particularly Porkpie and Desmond, he was always keen to point out the strength of African history with his regular interjection "There's an old African saying"

“I started Desmond’s when I was 23-years-old, I’m now a middle aged man and I have to say there have been advances in this country. I’ve seen the younger generation get on in society, it is very different from when I was younger, but the one thing that hasn’t changed, which is a real shame, is the fact that we are still saying there is nothing out there that represents us.”

Francis also says that the community is losing out on the battle for the audience because when a predominantly black programme is put together, it is not given the support it needs to be successful or the scripts are written by white writers.