BBC One’s Noughts + Crosses Is Even Better Than You Expected

This is not going to be what you expect it to be. If you’ve read Malorie Blackman’s iconic Noughts + Crosses book series, BBC One’s new adaptation will unlikely match your imagination’s interpretation. It’s a jolt to the deep nostalgia that Blackman’s cult trilogy evokes, but that’s no bad thing. In fact, as a fierce loyalist to the novels myself, I have to put my hands up and say that the differences are what make this incredible story even more urgent right now – 20 years after it was written.

In an alternate world, one in which Europe was colonised by Aprica (our Africa) 700 years ago, we meet Callum McGregor, a Nought (the white underclass) and Sephy Hadley, a Cross (the black ruling class). Together, they’re trying to negotiate their love for each other in a society that aggressively discourages interracial relationships. Prejudice runs deep here and, in this version of present-day London, the tension between the black and white communities is approaching a dangerous boiling point.

Noughts + Crosses thrusts us right into the action without much warning. This time around we don’t get to follow Callum (Jack Rowan) and Sephy (Masali Baduza) from childhood friendship to eventual (but unlikely) romance. When we meet them, they’re already on the brink of adulthood. Sephy is deliberating between art history and politics degrees while Callum prepares for the final stage of trials to get into the country’s top military academy: a Cross-only school about to admit Nought students for the first time.

Before panicking about the show having strayed from Blackman's sacred pages, just know that you'll find a strange comfort in the familiar refrains, despite the adaptation's unfamiliar, very modern surroundings. Callum’s mother Meggie (Helen Baxendale) is still housekeeper to Sephy’s mum, Jasmine (Bonnie Mbuli). They’re good friends despite the painfully prevalent divide between the races, not to mention their employer-employee dynamic. And though Sephy and Callum haven’t seen each other in years in this iteration of Blackman’s story, when their paths do cross at Jasmine’s birthday party, their years of forgotten affection and allyship are instantly written on both of their faces.

"That was probably the biggest change that we decided to make," executive producer Preethi Mavahalli explained at the series' London premiere on Monday. "We felt that if you age up the characters, they are forced into proper young adult choices. As young characters, it's easy to dismiss their love as 'puppy love' whereas when they get older, they're really having to choose where their loyalties lie, where they want their lives to lead, and they have to make choices between their family and their lover. It felt like the stakes were higher and it really was able to push the premise better."

In what Blackman describes as her take on Romeo and Juliet, the focus has always been on these two star-crossed characters fighting for a love they've been told they're not allowed. In the book, the only perspectives were Callum's and Sephy's but in the TV series, we get to absorb more of what's going on around them, in their families and in society. "Think of the TV adaptation as 'Noughts + Crosses plus'," Blackman added at the premiere.

Through characters like Callum's brother Jude (Josh Dylan), we see the frustration, resentment and blind bigotry that brews in the working class Nought communities and is harnessed by Liberation Militia leader Jack Dorn (Shaun Dingwall). Sephy's dad Kamal Hadley (Paterson Joseph) is the home secretary: doting father to his daughters, tolerant of his heavy-drinking wife Jasmine and unwaveringly racist towards the Nought race. Though the narrative of this world is anchored by Sephy and Callum, with the TV series our peripheral vision is dramatically widened, making the conflict at the heart of the story even more affecting.

Police brutality and the speed at which Cross officers will violently attack innocent Noughts is tossed at the audience like a grenade in the first five minutes of the very first episode and it's almost too resonant. The concern knotted between Ryan McGregor's (Ian Hart) eyebrows at the thought of his son attending a school full of Crosses who don't want him there hits you hard. And it's meant to. But there's also an underserved celebration of black culture that we see in a deliberate and beautiful way in this imagined reality.

Everywhere you look you see natural, afro hair in an environment where that's the celebrated standard of beauty and straight, Caucasian hair isn't. The vibrancy of African cultural norms vibrates through the use of music, the Yoruba language and traditional makeup. So much of our real-world reality is flipped, juxtaposed and challenged that to say this interpretation of Blackman's book is thought-provoking would be a wild understatement. It's moving, challenging, heartbreaking and more relevant than many may care to acknowledge.

The BBC's Noughts + Crosses is not the books we read all those years ago. That fact alone will likely surprise fans when they sit down to watch for the first time. But it's also a reality that allows Blackman's creation to feel current in a way that'll make us look around at the state of society as it stands right now, not as it was. "If I were to write the book now rather than 20 years ago, the book would be – I hope! – like the TV series. There were loads of times I thought Shit, I should've put that in the books!" Blackman joked. "The adaptation is very true to the spirit and soul [of the books]," she added, which is about as much as we can ask for. Thankfully, we got so much more than I think any of us expected.

Noughts + Crosses starts on BBC One on Thursday 5th March at 9pm and the boxset will be available on BBC iPlayer shortly after.