Am I missing something?

[myth]

English friends inform me that on British television there recently aired a drama about Anne Boleyn [again] which cast a black actress in the title role and that also on British television a new series based on the H E Bates books The Darling Buds of May is about to air. Some may recall the original British series that launched the career of Mrs Michael Douglas aka Catherine Zeta Jones. This new production has an actor of colour playing the part of an accountant who arrives in the village to investigate the Larkins' financial affairs and of course falls under the spell of Mariette Larkin.

In my opinion these two productions suggest nothing more than tokenism disguised as “colour blind casting”. Or am I missing something?

Why does a real [and white] historical character have to be played by an actor of colour? Should a white actor be cast to play Nelson Mandela or Rosa Parks? That would also be “colour-blind casting” but I can imagine the furore if such a casting decision took place.

Why does a series based on novels set in rural Kent in the 1950s need a character played by an actor of colour? This is also an historical anachronism as it would have been extremely unlikely for a black accountant to be working in the UK at that period.

Or is it me? Am I missing something? Are we not supposed to notice that the actor is of colour? Rather as the brilliant but octogenarian actor Ian McKellen has recently just reprised the role of Hamlet but we are not supposed to notice his age.

I can fully understand why plays are re-imagined in other locations. An entirely black cast for an African Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar for example, or a moghul Richard III . After all Kurosawa brilliantly transferred Macbeth to feudal Japan but I do question why actors of colour are inserted into dramas for what appears to be no real apparent reason.

I am beginning to wonder if colour-blind casting is in fact a front for a rather more distasteful aspect of paternalism with the casting of an actor of colour as nothing more than a metaphorical pat on the head to show other ethnic communities that the director, casting director, writer etc are all fully woke.

I am just wondering when someone is going to produce a series about the Norse peoples along the lines of Vikings and have the entire cast made up of actors of colour. Or a Nazi drama with a black Hitler!

I agree with most of what you said. I think it's an example of what happens when companies are trying a bit too hard to appear woke. It's similar to the upcoming Wheel of Time TV series on Prime. I'm a big fan of the books, but the trailer has Moiraine saying something like "someone will be powerful enough to challenge the Dark One, and it's one of you five". The problem here is that in the books, the prophecy and metaphysical mechanics about who the Dragon Reborn will be is clear that it will be a MALE, and further, Moiraine knows it is specifically one of three males in the group she's addressing (3 males, 2 females). So, rewriting any line that is inclusive of the females as a possible candidate for that prophesied champion of the Light is unnecessary and not accurate to the books. Women in the series play some of the most important, powerful characters in the world. Scripting lines that alter the fundamental mechanics of metaphysics of that universe in order to further a modern feminist (or whatever you want to call it) agenda just strikes me as wholly unnecessary. They're just trying too hard to prove how hip and woke they are.