The Showtime drama Guerrilla, created by Sam Miller John Ridely, looks at an anti-racism struggle that has been pushed away from the limelight. The British Black Panther movement lasted for a few years in the early 1970s but created an outsize influence on the leading civil rights issue of the time.
Jas Mitra (Freida Pinto) and Marcus (Babou Ceesay) are a London-based couple. As people of colour – he is black and she is Indian – they are the prospective victims of a new Immigration Act, which will restrict primary immigration to the United Kingdom, in effect barring residency status to all foreign nationals. Jas works as a nurse, while Marcus, an English graduate, is repeatedly offered menial jobs.
This is the premise from which Guerrilla begins, but the mini-series expands quickly into a taut drama with characters whose private motivations frequently come up against their public roles. Marcus had helped Dhari (Nathaniel Martello-White), a political prisoner lodged in a London jail, write an explosive book on racism, one that takes after Malcolm X more than it does Martin Luther King, Jr, resulting in its banning by the government.
At the other end of the spectrum is Nicholas Pence (Rory Kinnear), a police officer who heads the “Black Power” desk at the Met. Expressly deputed to contain any “trouble”, he is determined to spot and nip any resistance in the bud. It is he who orders the killing of Julian, a black activist and friend to Marcus and Jas, during a rally to protest the Immigration Act. When Jas and Marcus successfully evict Dhari out of prison, he must employ every resource at his command to hunt them down.
A lot more is simmering beneath these big-banner conflicts. Pinto is exquisite as Jas, a mercurial resistance fighter whose transformation has roots in the politics of her father, who is in an Indian jail for his connections with the Naxal movement. She pushes a reluctant Marcus to become a “soldier” and does not rue the consequences of her actions even when things turn violent.
There is a spotty history to her love life – she was in a relationship with Kent (Idris Elba) who has since become a famous artist feted by the London media. Jas feels he sold out to his race’s tormentors.
In many ways, Pinto is not just the lead heroine of the show, but its main lead. Her casting has been criticised by some who feel that a fictionalised depiction of the Black Panther movement should have featured a black actress. Regardless of that controversy, this is her first meaty role since her debut in Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and she bites into it with evident relish.
The supporting cast leaves an impact even in brief appearances. Jas’s mother Savi, played by Seeta Indrani, is a fierce woman fully supportive of the actions of her husband, and later, her daughter. Wunmi Mosaku is excellent as Kenya, a black prostitute who helps Pence with leads in exchange for her son’s safety.
For a show about race, Guerrilla bravely resists the impulse to get preachy. Inspector Pence is even allowed his impassioned spiel about how the white man civilised Africa. His villainy then is better-earned, since it is reached not unthinkingly but via deliberate, rational self-justification.