Who taught us that British history was the history of white people only? And how much knowledge and understanding have we all missed out on because of such attitudes? Steve McQueen’s Small Axe is the at once epic and intimate answer to these questions. The series of five films, which air on the BBC from tomorrow, takes its title from a West Indian proverb about collective struggle (“If you are the big tree, we are the small axe”), and encompasses true stories from the late 60s to the mid 80s. There is tragedy and shocking injustice here but these films are also, just as importantly, a celebration. There is friendship, family and food, with great music as a constant throughout, like the background rumble of a distant soundsystem on Carnival weekend.

As well as showcasing those who have already made it big, such as Star Wars’ John Boyega, Black Panther’s Letitia Wright and the Oscar-winning McQueen himself, these films are a platform for emerging talent (Amarah-Jae St Aubyn, Sheyi Cole and Kenyah Sandy are all luminous), and an appreciation of stage and screen stalwarts who are yet to receive the recognition they deserve (Llewella Gideon, Robbie Gee, Gary Beadle – take a bow). There is so much richness on display that any attempt to tease out influences and inspirations can only scratch the surface.

Even so, in the all-nighter spirit of its second instalment, Lovers Rock, here are some ideas for where you might like to take the party next.

Mangrove

This is not the first time the story of Frank Crichlow’s restaurant has been told on screen. In 1973, three years after the Mangrove Nine’s historic court victory – they had been arrested while protesting police harassment of the Notting Hill restaurant, but the case ended with the first official acknowledgment of police racism – the director Franco Rosso made a documentary short, The Mangrove Nine, about events leading up to the trial. Seek out some excerpts on YouTube, or head to the BFI Player for Rosso’s seminal 1980 film Babylon, featuring a score by all-round reggae great Dennis “Blackbeard” Bovell.

If you recognise episode one’s Aunt Betty as the actor Llewella Gideon, perhaps you were also a fan of her groundbreaking 90s sketch show The Real McCoy? All five series are currently available on iPlayer; sketches such as Misery’s, about a West Indian restaurant with a very particular approach to customer service, are as hilarious as ever.

A more serious history of the African diaspora is to be found in the writings of CLR James, Trinidadian scholar and mentor to several of the Mangrove Nine. It is his 1938 book The Black Jacobins, about the Haitian revolution, that Darcus Howe (Malachi Kirby) is reading when he gets into an argument with Barbara Beese (Rochenda Sandall). Their child together, Darcus Beese, would grow up to become president and CEO of Island Records, responsible for signing Amy Winehouse and Dizzee Rascal.

The real Barbara Beese and Darcus Jr feature prominently in Paul Trevor’s photographs of the anti-racism protests of the 1970s and 80s. Kirby can also be seen as the lead in the 2016 TV adaptation of Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots.

Lovers Rock

You can’t talk about this romantic reggae genre without hailing the glory of Janet Kay’s 1979 hit Silly Games, written by Babylon’s Dennis Bovell. Or indeed knocking out a few a cappella attempts at that famous high note, as the partygoers do in Lovers Rock. Other big names on the “blues party” scene of the late 1970s and early 80s included Louisa Mark (a west London girl whose 1975 single Caught You in a Lie is considered the first lovers rock single), Junior English and Gregory Isaacs, as listed by Martha (Amarah-Jae St Aubyn) when a handsome new friend, Franklyn (Micheal Ward), asks what kind of music she’s into (“So, you a rude gal or a soulie?”).

Dancefloor feelings of a different kind are released when the selector plays the Revolutionaries’ Kunta Kinte (named after the same Roots character played by Mangrove’s Malachi Kirby and referenced in Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 song King Kunta). It is a scene of communal catharsis that’s beautifully captured by Antigua-born cinematographer and first-time McQueen collaborator Shabier Kirchner, who achieved some strangely similar moments in Crystal Moselle’s 2018 teen drama Skate Kitchen.

While this is St Aubyn’s sparkling debut, Ward is already a Bafta Rising Star, having made a name for himself in 2019 rap morality tale Blue Story and Top Boy (now on Netflix). If you are as moved by Martha and Franklyn’s swoonsome story as Clifton (Kedar Williams-Stirling) is by the bass, you will enjoy Sareeta Domingo’s new black British romance novel If I Don’t Have You and Bolu Babalola’s bestselling story collection Love in Colour.

Red, White and Blue

Police racism is an unavoidable theme throughout Small Axe, but this biopic of former Met superintendent Leroy Logan (John Boyega), takes a fascinating look from the other side of the thin blue line. As with Lovers Rock, it is co-written by Courttia Newland, whose debut novel The Scholar trod similar coming-of-age territory, and also serves as a reminder that young Caribbean London is a diverse community in its own right.

It is probably fair to say, for instance, that the strait-laced, career-focused young Logan was not as big into reggae as some of Small Axe’s other protagonists. He was apparently more about the 80s pop-soul played by his childhood friend Leee John’s band Imagination. Their biggest hit was 1982’s Just an Illusion, which should be an instant addition to any playlist titled Music to Wear Sequins to. Logan’s own memoir Closing Ranks: My Life As a Cop, was published earlier this year and continues past where the film leaves off, detailing his involvement in high profile-cases and his election as the first chair of the National Black Police Association.

That’s what happened afterwards. For context on what police attitudes were like before, there are some fascinating clips in the BFI’s free and permanent Black Britain on Film archive, including vox pops on a high street in the Midlands circa 1966 (“We got enough over ’ere just working without putting ’em in the police force!”) and a short interview with Astley Lloyd Blair, who made history by becoming Britain’s first black special constable in 1964.

Alex Wheatle

Alex Wheatle MBE is the author of 16 books for young adults, but it is his own story that’s told here. Wheatle’s early life was rough – he was abandoned by both parents as a baby, grew up in an abuse-ridden children’s home and spent time in prison – and it helped inspire his successful literary career, notably early novels Brixton Rock (1999) and East of Acre Lane (2001).

Wheatle’s experience of seeking a black identity in 1970s Brixton after a childhood spent in predominantly white communities has parallels with Shola Amoo’s 2019 film The Last Tree. In one of this episode’s many tragicomic moments, the young Wheatle is introduced to the barbershop as community hub, as most famously depicted in the classic Channel 4 sitcom Desmond’s (recently added to Netflix). The overpolicing of black communities also echoes through George Amponsah’s documentary The Hard Stop (2015).

In prison, Wheatle’s cellmate (Robbie Gee, another Real McCoy alum) insists on the importance of self-education as a supplement to a system that often lets black pupils down. That means a second recommendation for The Black Jacobins – it really is a must-read – but also some other reading-list additions. Among the books Wheatle read in prison, contributing to his changed worldview, are Chester Himes’s detective novels and Native Son, Richard Wright’s 1940 account of a black youth living in poverty in Chicago. There is also a charming four-minute Guardian video of Wheatle in wistful mode, reminiscing about the pre-gentrification Brixton market: “What I do miss is that constant pounding of reggae … I really miss that!” he says.

Education

None of the true stories in Small Axe are well known, exactly, but the scandal of de facto education segregation in the north London borough of Haringey is perhaps the most underreported. Twelve-year-old Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy) is an enthusiastic student of science and astronomy (he’d probably have loved Octavia E Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy), but is singled out as a troublemaker by prejudiced teachers, while his overworked parents are too exhausted to protest.

The dynamic is particular to the UK school system, but the ways racism can manifest in education have previously been explored in season four of The Wire and Chana Joffe-Walt’s Nice White Parents podcast. If, like Kingsley, you had an unsatisfactory education that omitted mention of such pan-African feminist icons as the Notting Hill Carnival co-founder Claudia Jones, then Carole Boyce-Davies has written several books that can fill in the gaps. The story of the 16th-century Hausa warrior queen that motivates Kingsley to improve his reading has also served as inspiration for the recent historical fantasy novel Queen of Zazzau by JS Emuakpor.

Any future screen adaptation of Queen of Zazzau would offer a good lead role for the 28-year-old actor Naomi Ackie, perhaps? She plays an activist in Education, but had her breakthrough in the unusually multi-ethnic period drama Lady Macbeth (2016). Or maybe Tamara Lawrance would be better casting? She plays Kingsley’s older sister, and already has an exciting role coming up in thriller Silent Twins, another story from recent black British history.

Mangrove, the first of the Small Axe films, airs on BBC One on Sunday 15 November