Watch "Black Ops"
Monday reading #9
Monday Reading is my weekly recommendation of something I’ve found thought-provoking or fascinating. Sometimes it is about food or music or projects I care about supporting. Sometimes I do not send it on Monday. Please share with anyone who might like the vibes!!
Do you know about Gbemisola Ikumelo? You need to know about Gbemisola Ikumelo. She might be familiar to you from Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own—she played Maxine’s best friend Clance. Or maybe you’ve seen her BAFTA-winning short “Brain In Gear,” a comedy about a woman who lives with two horrible flatmates—the physical manifestations of the voices in her head.
If you don’t, you should look out for her new satirical cop show Black Ops (“a hilarious comedy about police racism,” per The Guardian), just renewed for a second season on BBC One. Ikumelo created, wrote, and directed the show with her creative partner Akemnji Ndifornyen, with whom she starred in the sketch show Famalam (e.g., “There Is No White Jesus.”)
Ikumela and co-star Hammed Animashaun play Dom and Kay, best friends and Police Community Support Officers (civilian cops lite) for the London Metropolitan Police Service who quit their jobs when approached by a senior officer who wants them to join his undercover operation infiltrating a drug gang on a housing estate. It’s so undercover that no one else in the police force knows about it, which becomes a problem for them when he turns up dead. (“This is some Line of Duty shit!” Dom says.) There are many things I liked about it, including a subplot about Kay’s slavish devotion to the crooked, charismatic youth pastor at his evangelical church and the fact that it used Nina Nesbitt’s incredible cover of “Toxic.”
Am I an asshole who mostly watches British television?? I guess I am!! But I loved this, and you should look out for it—here’s hoping it pops up on a U.S. streamer soon.
You are the best Monday thing in my Sunday inbox.