There’s something elusive and magical about genuinely genre-breaking cop shows – think True Detective or Life on Mars.
Get Millie Black has that quality, although its roots are deeply planted in the real world.
Tamara Lawrence plays the eponymous ex-Scotland Yard detective who moves back to Jamaica after her abusive mother dies and tries to settle back onto the beat as a Kingston cop while saving her trans sister from a violent life and early death in the notorious Gully.
Pursuing an apparently ordinary missing girl case, she untangles skeins of corruption and confusion that entwine gangsters, high society and the unwelcome intervention of her old employers from London.
Skilfully and poetically penned by Marlon James, Get Millie Black combines a gripping thriller with echoes of dark colonial history and lets it all unfold with the twists and turns of a perfectly paced film noir mystery.
Instantly addictive.
