What I’m Watching: “Noughts & Crosses”
I’m not a big small screen viewer, but one thing about LockdownNZ (or anywhere else for that matter, I imagine) is that in lieu of going out you (i.e. “one”, aka me!) end up falling back on home-based entertainment options. So I’ve found myself checking out TV series that are either new here or which I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while. In a way, as shall be made clear, Noughts & Crosses ticks both boxes.
And since the show also fall into the speculative fiction quadrant, I thought I’d go for a “What I’m Watching” post in lieu of sticking with “What I’m Reading”, although there’s a few of those in the wings as well. 🙂
Spoiler Alert: I usually try pretty hard to avoid spoilers but I don’t think I can discuss Nought & Crosses without crossing over into spoiler territory. So if you’re concerned about that, maybe pass on this post, although I’ll alert you again when we reach the critical point.
Otherwise, here goes.
Noughts & Crosses
As you may know, the BBC production of Noughts & Crosses is based on Malorie Blackman’s well-known YA novel of the same name, first published in 2001. It’s a story I’ve always thought sounds really good and intended reading, but somehow never gotten around to. Although this happens sometimes, it sharpened my keenness to see the series, but also means that my comments are solely based on the show, rather than the book.
Overall, I enjoyed the series, and if not for aspects of the ending would probably be posting that I really enjoyed it. Firstly, I loved the worldbuilding. The basic premise is that rather than Europe invading and colonizing Africa, the opposite was the case. In the TV series, this occurred seven-hundred years before a 21st century present and the UK is still a holdout for the colonial past in which the “Crosses” (the minority, ruling elite of African descent) rule the “Noughts”, the descendants of the original inhabitants and the majority of the population.
The reason I say the UK is a “holdout” is because the political regime there is one of enforced separation between “Noughts” and “Crosses”, including the outlawing of marriage between the two races, and with the institutions of power exclusively dominated by the “Cross” minority. However, it’s made clear that things are largely very different in contemporary Africa. In this sense, I felt the Noughts & Crosses “world” reasonably closely resembled Zimbabwe and South Africa when they were both governed by separatist, white-minority regimes in the mid-later half of the 20th century. The minority regimes were English and Dutch (the Afrikaaners) in origin, but did not reflect the contemporaneous political cultures in either the UK or the Netherlands.
The African-dominated “world” of Noughts and Crosses UK is chiefly conveyed visually by means of a large statue of an African woman that dominates the London skyline, and the African culture of the Crosses also predominates in clothing colours and fabric, jewellery, and hairstyles—although otherwise the world is a 21st century urban environment of high rise towers and more derelict areas, cars and public transport, cellphones and computers. All positions of authority and power, i.e. the government, the judiciary, the military and the police, are exclusively Cross, as are the upper echelons of professions such as medicine, law, and journalism. The Noughts are unemployed, servants, or unskilled labour—but there is beginning to be some change, including Nought recruits being accepted into an elite Cross military college.
So in terms of being speculative fiction, this is alternate history playing out in a contemporary urban setting.
The story centres on the inequality and injustice of the segregated society and discriminatory culture enforced by the Cross regime, but does so through the central characters of Sephy (Persephone) Hadley, a young Cross woman from a highly privileged background, and Callum McGregor, a Nought, whose mother, Meggy, is housekeeper for Sephy’s parents. Sephy and Callum played together as children, but interracial friendships of any sort are frowned upon so they only meet again as young adults, when Sephy is about to start university and Callum has been accepted for Mercy Point, the elite military academy referred to above.
The two reconnect and fall in love in a Romeo and Juliet / Westside Story type romance about young people from opposing factions, a relationship that is highly dangerous for both of them, but particularly for Callum in a society where sexual relationships and marriage between Noughts and Crosses are illegal. Their evolving relationship plays out against a backdrop of racial tension: on the streets, e.g. police violence and Nought deaths, as well as protests and terror attacks by the Nought liberation movement; but also in government, with power plays between more liberal and conservative Cross factions, with Sephy’s father a major player on the hardline conservative side.
Eventually, these forces exact a devastating toll on Callum’s family and inevitably place a major strain on his and Sephy’s relationship. But up until the end I found all the layers of conflict believable and compelling, and I thought all the characters were really good: not just Sephy and Callum, but their respective parents and siblings, friends and associates and enemies. However, I really struggled with the series’ ending, which I can’t really explain without spoilers, so it’s time to reiterate the spoiler alert.
Please don’t continue reading if you don’t want spoilers!
At the end, Sephy and Callum split up as a result of the stresses arising from what’s happened to Callum’s family, and he joins the Liberation Militia (LM), which comprises either terrorists or heroic freedom fighters depending on whether you’re a Cross or a Nought respectively. By this stage, Sephy’s father has become Prime Minister and the LM decide to kidnap and either ransom/kill her, to send a message. Callum not only goes along with this, but actively sets it up—yet at the very end, despite the gobsmacking enormity of this betrayal of trust, Sephy chooses to run away with him.
I think it is this aspect of the ending in particular that I really struggled with, because Callum’s betrayal of their love and Sephy’s trust is something I don’t believe most relationships would easily recover from, even if the betrayed party understands the forces driving the act. And although Stockholm Syndrome, in which kidnap victims develop a psychological alliance with their captors, is a potential explanation, in this case there is a prior relationship that has been completely betrayed, and in addition the kidnapping is not of long duration, which mitigates against it.
I also struggled somewhat with Callum going along with the kidnapping in the first place. Admittedly, he’s very angry and bitter, which might drive that level of betrayal and the real risk to Sephy’s life. Yet in this case their in-love relationship is very recent and we, as viewers, have never seen him not only fall out of love with her, but also to focus personal hatred on her, despite his rage against the Cross regime.
Other, albeit more minor objections, included Sephy’s father, the PM, being allowed to go in alone to meet the terrorists/kidnappers and hand over the ransom. Why, after all, wouldn’t they simply seize the opportunity to kill him, too, since he is the arch-enemy? And then somehow Callum and Sephy manage to escape together, despite the site being surrounded by armed police, as well as eluding the subsequent manhunt that would surely ensue if the PM’s daughter were still missing…
In conclusion, although I enjoyed the series up to that point, I was disappointed by the ending. I still think it’s worth watching and I would probably give a second series a chance as well, only with far lower expectations given the reservations above.