Stream It Or Skip It: 'Get Millie Black' on HBO, where a Scotland Yard detective returns to her home in Jamaica and faces her tormented past (2024)

There aren’t a ton of shows that take place and are shot in Jamaica, a place that has a culture that never gets explored with any depth. In a new HBO/Channel 4 drama, a former Scotland Yard detective goes home to Kingston, but has to contend with her past as well as the family she left behind after being banished to London.

GET MILLIE BLACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A sunny shot of a tropical bush and an old house. A voice says, “This is just another story about Jamaica. It won’t add up. It won’t make sense. But like every story about this country, it is a ghost story.”

The Gist: Millie-Jean Black (Tamara Lawrance) grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, but was sent by her abusive mother to relatives in London when she was a teenager, after she confronted her mother about the beatings she gave her brother Orville. At a certain point, her mom calls to tell her that Orville died in a protest in an area of the city called the Gully. Millie went on to become a detective with London’s Metropolitan Police, investigating missing persons cases. But when her mother died, Millie saw Orville’s signature and realized that Orville is still alive.

What Millie didn’t realize until she moved back to Kingston is that, as far as her mother was concerned, Orville did die. In reality, Orville transitioned; she is now going by the name Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen) and she turns tricks in the Gully, much to Millie’s dismay. Every time Millie bails her sister out of jail, she tells Bis that she can come live with her at their old family home. But to Bis, there were too many horrible memories there for her to go back.

Millie, who is now a detective with the Kingston Central police, and her partner Curtis Hamilton (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr.) are given the case of a missing teenager named Janet Fenton (Shernet Swearine). It leads them to a strip club that’s on land owned by Freddie Summerville (Peter John Thwaites), the son of Leddick Summerville (Paul Issa), one of Kingston’s biggest land owners. The case is getting so big, that Scotland Yard sends a detective, Luke Holborn (Joe Dempsie), to assist; Millie, having worked for Scotland Yard, knows what those implications are. Things get really serious when a body is found at one of Summerville’s properties and is identified as Freddie, though Millie knows it’s not him.

In the meantime, Hibiscus continues to turn tricks and be a big part of the trans community in the Gully, despite an increase of attacks on trans women in the vicinity.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Get Millie Black gives us some big Luther vibes.

Our Take: Created and written by Marlon James, Get Millie Black is as much about Kingston and the mysteries surrounding Millie’s life as it is about the case at hand. We find out by the end of the episode that the missing teen’s case is more of an entryway into Kingston’s underworld, and that there are pretty wide implications in that case.

But the case at hand feels like standard crime drama fare compared to what Millie has to deal with reintegrating herself into life in Kingston, decades after she was banished by her mother to London. Yes, there are issues of class and race here, shown in a way that’s particular to Jamaican culture. But at its heart, the central case is still about conspiracies, high-powered criminals and money, things we’ve seen many times.

We’re far more interested in Millie facing her demons, and trying to make sure that Hibiscus is safe, than the actual central case of the season. Millie’s relationship with Hibiscus is fascinating because she’s fiercely protective of her sister, even though she thought Bis was dead for years, then had to process the notion that she has transitioned to being a woman. It’s a change that she seems to take in stride, but then she accidentally deadnames Hibiscus and you realize that the adjustment isn’t quite as easy as Millie is making it look.

Lawrance’s performance is the key to the show’s authenticity, because she definitely conveys the strangeness of a woman who is in between the two worlds she’s experienced. There are even times when her voice swings from a London accent to a Kingston patois, and it shows that she no longer fully fits in, even though she’s back in the city in which she grew up.

The more we see of Millie and Bis’ relationship, along with how Millie resolves being back in a city that had mostly terrible memories for her, the more dynamic the series will be.

Sex and Skin: Millie has sex with a bartender; it looks like it isn’t the first time they’ve done it, and he leaves just as Curtis is arriving the next morning to take Millie to the police station.

Parting Shot: Millie and Curtis find Janet Fenton, but then get caught up in a shootout.

Sleeper Star: Chyna McQueen is riveting as Hibiscus, especially during the scene where she and her friends are attacked and chased into an abandoned building.

Most Pilot-y Line: Millie tries to find out about Janet Fenton from the Summerville’s housekeeper, and she bonds with the woman by spitting in the lemonade the housekeeper is making for her boss’ lawn party.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Get Millie Black is fascinating not only because of its Jamaican setting but Lawrance’s performance as someone trying to figure out her place as much as she’s trying to figure out the case at hand.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.