A man standing up in court to protest his innocence sounds like the stuff of any number of legal dramas, from Matlock to Suits. But You Don't Know Me (BBC One, Sunday) is different for several reasons – the first being that the accused is a young black British male, on trial for the fatal shooting of a local drug dealer.
And so Tom Edge’s adaptation of Imran Mahmood’s 2017 novel is more than merely a Sunday night thriller. It’s the sort of series routinely produced in the United States but still a rarity in the UK: an exploration of race and privilege and the assumptions people make or don’t make when someone from a certain background is accused of a certain type of crime.
If that sounds like heavy going it is worth reflecting on the second thing that sets You Don’t Know Me apart from other courtroom capers. Which is that it weaves an engrossing mystery regarding the fate of the girlfriend of the drama’s car-salesman protagonist, Hero (Samuel Adewunmi). Edge’s last series, the submarine romp Vigil, was a leaky mess. And so the absorbing plot comes as a relief and perhaps a surprise.
The series is four hours long – how soon before jurors are itching for a loo break?
Hero falls in love with Kyra (Sophie Wilde) when he sees her reading on the bus (a meet-cute that feels like a contrivance too far). Having wooed her with blueberry muffins and coffee, he is, alas, devastated to discover there is more to her than meets the eye – and not in a good way. And when she disappears he is determined to win her back.
This requires him to strike up an alliance with Jamil (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva), a local drug dealer, for whose murder Hero will later stand trial. Their deal is simple: he completes Jamil’s college coursework and his new ally helps him track down his girlfriend.
Inevitably a gun enters the picture. To rescue Kyra from the gang he believes to be holding her, Hero needs to be armed with something other than moral virtue. Hence the firearm that ultimately leads to the accusation that he bumped off Jamil.
None of this is necessarily all that original. And the drama takes a misstep by having Hero narrate his story to the jury in court. The series is four hours long – how soon before jurors are itching for a loo break?
But the script also feels foregrounded in the lived experience of black Londoners. As it would, given that Mahmood wrote the book after 20 years as a barrister defending people just like Hero. With Adewunmi’s simmering performance bringing further heft, You Don’t Know Me is both a compelling whodunnit and a drama about something bigger than itself.
