I remember reading Bernardine Evaristo’s electric novel Mr Loverman when it was released in 2013 and feeling the thrill of discovering a new perspective on the Windrush generation immigrant story.
It told the story of Barrington “Barry” Jedidiah Walker, a 74-year-old, Antiguan-born man living in Hackney, east London, working up the courage to finally leave his wife Carmel (Sharon D Clarke) of 50 years to be with the love of his life. The problem for Barry was that his other lover was a man.
In the BBC’s eight-part adaptation, Barry is played by Lennie James (The Walking Dead) as an eccentric, full of life in his dapper suits and delivering Shakespeare quotes with a knowing smirk.
Since Barry was a teenager in the 60s, he and his best friend Morris (Ariyon Bakare) have led a double life, keeping their love a secret. But just as Barry is about to finally break the news to Carmel (Sharon D Clarke) and their two children, Donna and Maxine, his wife learns that her father is on his deathbed in Antigua.
She leaves to be with him and Barry – having declined her plea to accompany her – is left to wrestle with the potential repercussions of coming out. How would his wife react? Would his daughters accept him? Would he be safe as an old, gay Black man out in the world?
Directed by Hong Khaou (Lilting), Mr Loverman captures a slice of British Caribbean family life in London with plenty of rum and goat curry, God and gossip – and misogyny and homophobia.
While the book was set in 2010, Khaou subtly brings it forward to the modern day via Deliveroo drivers, references to the gentrification of London and conversations about same-sex marriage and “gay rappers”.
The series starts slowly and only truly starts to find its footing three episodes in when Barry’s conflict starts to be explored: can he overcome the years of trauma that have made him understandably resistant to publicly identifying as a gay man? “I’m not a homosexual, I’m a Barrysexual”, he says half-jokingly, half-defiantly to Morris who is pushing him to come out.
In one of the most intense scenes, Barry is woken by his grandson having a party in his home with some friends who are playing drill music with homophobic lyrics.
Barry is irate and when one of the friends calls him a “cocksucker”, we see the burning rage explode in Barry after decades of feeling hated by society.
The drama is at its best when it dials in on the impact growing up in a hostile, bigoted world has had on Barry and Morris. Through flashbacks, we see the two men being caught together first in Antigua, and then later, by Morris’s wife who leaves him and takes his kids with her.
There is also a quietly devastating sequence in which Barry, walking through Hackney to meet Morris, passes a corner where years earlier he found a man killed who was “cheating on his wife with a batty man”.
He also goes by Abney Park, a known cruising area for men, where he was once brutally attacked. His life is full of painful reminders of how difficult and dangerous life was (and still is) for many Black gay men on the margins of society.
Mr Loverman is a wonderfully complex series that weaves together issues of marital breakdown, intergenerational conflict, infidelity, racism and sexuality. But while it is faithful to the original, it doesn’t quite capture its magic. It is dragged down by its reliance on voiceovers to convey the inner monologues of characters – they’re more distracting than insightful.
And while the script itself is serviceable, there is some clunky dialogue (like the awkward dinner date Donna goes on where the man says “marriage is hard” and she replies “marriage is a vehicle for female oppression”), and one scene between Barry and his grandson discussing a victim of knife crime that comes off as a bad public safety campaign.
Barry and Carmel’s daughters are also not fleshed out as much as they should be and so the series relies on the tired tropes of “life in order older sister” and “messy younger sister” to fill in the gaps.
What lifts show above lots of what’s on television right now are the utterly captivating central performances by James and Clark. James embodies all of Barry’s charisma and charm, alongside his damage and shame, while Clark conveys all of Carmel’s heartache, bitterness and sacrifice of staying with a man who she knows is a “cheat”.
The tension between the two is so thick that it’s easy to understand why Barry calls their home “the lion’s den”. The chemistry between James and Bakare is equally palpable; every stolen glance, smile and touch of hands convey the depth and tenderness of their relationship.
It is rare and powerful to see two elderly Black gay men on-screen in love – and having sex. Mr Loverman is part of a changing cultural tide that is bringing the stories and histories of Black British gay men to the mainstream (alongside podcasts like We Were Always Here and books like Revolutionary Acts). It should be celebrated that the BBC is bringing the lives of Black gay men out of the shadows.
‘Mr Loverman’ starts tonight at 9pm on BBC One. All episodes are streaming on BBC iPlayer
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