“Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds,” wrote William Shakespeare, in the schoolboy favourite Sonnet 116. These lines, quoted in interminable derivative wedding speeches, refer to a common desire (if not a common reality): that love should be immutable and accepting. But for the Bard-loving hero of BBC One’s new eight-part series Mr Loverman, love is an altogether more vexing thing that will take him to “the edge of doom” and back again.
Barrington “Barry” Walker (Lennie James) has done well in Britain since arriving from Antigua, many decades earlier. A self-described “man of property, man of style”, he has been successful in business and now lives in a big house with his pious wife Carmel (Sharon D Clarke). He is still providing for his grown-up daughters, feckless Maxine (Tamara Lawrance) and Donna (Sharlene Whyte), whose teenage son is being put through expensive private school by his grandpa. There’s just one problem: Barry has been in a secret homosexual relationship, since adolescence, with his best friend Morris (Ariyon Bakare). But as time begins to run out for these star-crossed lovers, their moments together become more precious. “C’mon Barry,” he implores himself, “you know the truth will set you free.”
But the truth is complex. Standing in the way of Barry and Morris’s happiness is the – justifiable – unhappiness of his fire and brimstone wife. “I’ll have plenty of time to sleep when the good Lord comes for me,” she tells her husband when he comes stumbling in, drunk, in the wee hours. “And that won’t be long now.” And then there’s the wider attitudes of the community: both men have experienced first and second-hand homophobic violence. And, finally, there are the precarious family dynamics: Morris has already lost his, Barry’s is hanging by a thread. The opportunity to “have it all” has already passed, but both men know that the point of “now or never” is rapidly approaching.
Based on the novel by Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, this is not a story with simple answers. Unfolding over eight short episodes (refreshingly sized at just 30 minutes), the show’s writer, Nathaniel Price, embraces the complexity of the premise. Barry is not let off lightly for his deceptions, though neither is the misery of his living conditions understated. And, while this is a tale of accepting yourself, whatever your age, it also reinforces a message so true in real life but so absent from fiction: you are only the protagonist of your own story.
Embracing this nuance allows James the opportunity to shine. A reliable presence in British and international TV, he is as good as he’s ever been as the dapper, mercurial Barry. Bakare, too, is entirely convincing as his quieter, more dependable foil. At times, their scenes together have an almost theatrical quality, as the cascading lines of quasi-Shakespearean, dialect-infused speech fill kitchens and cafes. It’s a relationship that works better on screen than the intergenerational ones, where the show takes a gearshift. “Watch out folks,” Barry’s internal monologue muses, “soap opera just come to Dalston!” Plotlines involving Barry’s daughter Maxine and grandson Daniel (Tahj Miles) feel more BBC Three, where the rest of the show is pure BBC One.
But when so many depictions of repressed homosexuality – especially within ethnic minority communities – are marked by relentless suffering, it is refreshing to see a show embrace its characters’ own autonomy. Autonomy to make decisions – good and bad – and forge their own path. Mr Loverman is a slim but moving testament to the enduring power of self-acceptance.