Rating: 4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
There is A LOT of violence in this final episode of Noughts
+ Crosses. (Well, we don’t know if the drama will be re-commissioned for
another series; here’s hoping!)
At times it does feel rather gratuitous. But at the same
time, when rage, frustration, injustice and angst are blended together, things
can get pretty out of control.
The much-loved grime rapper Stormzy makes an appearance in this episode, as the editor of The Ohene Standard newspaper, Kolawale. Stormzy delivers a pretty convincing performance. The guy can act, who knew?
Barely has the editor given the order: “Let’s party” to celebrate 100 years of The Ohene Standard, than the festivities are turned upside down. Members of the Liberation Militia barge in and smash at everything in sight.
It isn’t long before the police arrive, and though Callum and Jude manage to escape, their accomplice Nicola does not.
It is absolutely no surprise that Jude sees his friend being attacked, and runs away. He seems to be in the habit of creating trouble and then being too cowardly to take the blame for it. Although of course, knowing how brutal the police are to Noughts, we can sympathise with him to some degree.
Speaking of degrees, Sephy doesn’t want one. Her father cannot
believe she doesn’t want to go to Okene-Aprica University, despite having
been offered a place to study there. Okene-Aprica is depicted as a prestigious university,
I suppose akin to Oxbridge. Persephone’s act of defiance signifies a rejection
of the establishment, of the status quo. She doesn’t want to study at an
institution that has created leaders that go on to continue the cycle of
oppression against Noughts – her father being one of them. She doesn’t want to
be part of a system that will teach selective history and stoke racial tension.
More than this, Sephy’s decision to decline her offer shows the mind of a
strong woman at work. Throughout the drama, Sephy takes up her place as an
empowering female character – she has her own voice and she uses it even when
men are trying to silence her.
Kamal, for once, is silenced by Sephy. He refers to his philandering
with a Nought woman years ago – which produced his mixed-race son Yaro – as “outside
silliness”. This is the same man who has been speaking of interracial relationships
as evidence of an erosion of culture, and the products of them as “mongrels”.
The hypocrisy is unreal. Furthermore, what would have happened if Yaro had not
turned up at the Hadley house to tell Jasmine and her daughters the concealed
truth, as he did in the last episode?
Jasmine and Sephy cannot cope with Kamal’s lies anymore, and
decide to leave the home.
I don’t blame them. Kamal really does not seem to have a
heart. In reference to the death of Nicola, after excessive restraint and force
from police officers, he says “One of the culprits has already been… dealt with.”
Who refers to the murder of a human being in such a way?
Kamal cares little about Noughts, and he cares little for his own family. He meets with editor Kolawale to ask him to discredit the (true) story that Yaro is going to tell the press. He will stop at nothing to cover his own tracks.
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| The word “halfer” is analogous to the offensive word “half-caste”. Kamal’s influence has meant Yaro is now being painted as a deranged attention-seeker. |
Kamal isn’t the only one who does a lot of lying in this episode. So does Callum.
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| That’s not what he said about Sephy in the last episode! |
Callum’s resolution to stamp
out his feelings for Sephy enables him to take steps he would never otherwise have
taken. In a drastic move to take power from Kamal, Jack Dorn authorises
the LM to go for Sephy.
Callum is the bait, and Sephy takes it. In this moment, Callum becomes almost a Judas-like character, betraying the one he loves by first lavishing her with kisses – before he leaves room for the eagles to come swooping in.
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| The fear and betrayal in Sephy’s eyes cuts to the heart. |
Callum watches on
emotionlessly as another LM member thrusts a sack over Sephy’s head. This is not
the Callum we know. What has happened to him?
Jude’s relentless taunting, questioning his brother’s loyalty to the cause, appears to be the push factor.
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| A look of approval and a pat on the back from Jack Dorn seems to have become Jude’s drug. |
It is pitiful to see just how much Jude craves attention from the LM’s ringleader. His character is a prime example of how becoming marginalised and cast aside can lead someone to seek identity and value from the wrong people. Jack Dorn has essentially become his new father.
Speaking of fathers, will the father of Yaro Hadley please stand up – and be a real father? Nope. Nope, he won’t. All Kamal will do is pay off his illegitimate son and order him to go far, far away. Yet, as Yaro reminds him, no matter how many miles separate them, Yaro is not a fictional character. He is a bodily personification of Kamal’s romance with a Nought woman – evidence that he has broken all the rules he claims to stand on so firmly.
As different as they may be, Kamal and Jude are ultimately breaking the same rules. They are aligning themselves with a code which tells them that career opportunities and fame come before family. Their morals are being further flung out of the window, as their statuses rise.
“This is my side. I brought you in”, Jude retorts, as his brother Callum reminds him that they are on the same side and fighting against the same system. Jude’s desperation to finally be a part of something, has come to trump everything. His relationships with his mother and brother are shrivelling away, all because the Liberation Militia has given him a new identity.
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| Sephy’s fear is palpable. |
“She’s nothing. She’s nothing.” Callum repeats to himself, in an effort to reduce the woman he loves to a disembodied object. It’s a tactic used by many to reason away treating other human beings like animals. The Jews of the Holocaust were referred to as ‘rats’ by the Nazis. Black people were depicted as ‘monkeys’ during the slave trade and colonial era (and sometimes they still are). The Tutsis killed in the tribal genocide in Rwanda were called ‘cockroaches’. The same word was employed by Katie Hopkins to describe the refugees that drowned in the Mediterranean in 2015. The fact of the matter is, when people are stripped of their humanity, it is much easier to justify killing them or treating them with less, or little, dignity. That’s why today, we say 'Black lives matter' – for so long, black people were not even seen as human. In the United States, for a long time, black people were only seen as constituting three-fifths of a human being.
The very thing that the Crosses do to the Noughts – in treating
them as naught – Callum is doing to his Cross girlfriend.
But two wrongs don’t make a right.
Callum knows that, deep down. Yet, with everything he has,
he tries to fight his conscience. Avoid eye contact. Avoid talking to her. But
that doesn’t change anything: Sephy is still there, and she is a still a human.
A human being that he still loves.
And the mother and father that love her, too, will do all they can to make sure she stays alive.
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| I must say, this Police Commissioner is extremely annoying! Always butting in! |
This wasn’t how you were going to change the world, Callum”, Sephy reminds Callum, as she sits with her back to the wall of her cell.
“Well, maybe it’s the only way left.” – comes Callum’s wistful response.
“No. It’s a choice you’re making.” Sephy replies, firmly.
This exchange is important. It gives voice to the desperation
of a disenfranchised people, with centuries of oppression on their backs.
Desperation doesn’t cause only Callum and the Liberation Militia to go too far. Sephy also goes for desperate tactics in these desperate times. Angst and anger have transformed Callum and Sephy’s relationship from one of mutual love into a dysfunctional dynamic of extreme violence.
“I’m not your enemy”, Sephy tells Callum, as he retreats.
“No, you’re worse. Standing by, watching, doing nothing. All the while claiming that you love me.”
Ooh! That line from Callum! It echoes with the weight of
centuries of white passivity, in the real world.
Martin Luther King Jr. talked about reaching ‘the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice’. For ‘in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’
Callum’s words hurt her, but Sephy doesn’t argue with the
validity of them.
She does argue, however, with how Callum is choosing to
translate the sentiments of his mind into murderous action.
Of course, so do Callum’s mum and Sephy’s mother. The tension builds in their relationship as they seek to protect and fight for their children.
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| It is the same parental instinct that fuels Jasmine and Meggie that eventually causes Callum to recognise the deep error of his ways. |
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| Callum extends his hand to Sephy, symbolising a ceasefire. |
Though Callum and Sephy call a truce, that isn’t the way of Jack Dorn. Despite Kamal having stepped down from his position as Prime Minister as the LM demanded, Jack Dorn still wants further revenge.
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| The money for Sephy’s ransom isn’t enough for Jack Dorn. |
The leader of the Liberation Militia wants power – and he cares not a jot about he gets it. Dorn relishes being the one in control when he meets with Kamal; being at the head of a hierarchy where he is usually at the bottom. He knows that where Sephy is involved, Kamal will do whatever he is instructed in order to keep her safe – Dorn knows he has Kamal right under his thumb.
It takes Jude a while to realise that his newly adopted father isn’t the man he thought he was. Jude’s panicked words to Callum show how wracked with guilt he is for not realising sooner – instead getting swept away with the tide onto the wrong shore.
The penny drops in a big way when the horrifying event that concluded
Episode One, is brought into the light. Jude realises that it was, in fact,
Jack Dorn, that killed their friend Danny – as he lay fighting for his life in the
hospital.
Dorn feels no remorse for he did. He unashamedly states: “Danny’s
death was a game-changer.”
What kind of racial justice activist kills his own people in
order to bring about change? Dorn is a malignant opportunist who will go to unimaginable
lengths to further his own ends.
Just how far will he go?
How does the episode end?
The series?
I’m not going to tell you. You have to watch it for yourself! Literally today, because it expires on BBC iPlayer tonight at 10pm, on the day I write this! But I will say, this a phenomenal final episode to end a phenomenal series.
Thank you for reading my reviews - I hope you have enjoyed them and enjoyed the show!
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