Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle was a television series broadcast on BBC Four in February 2019. The series consisted of eight fifteen-minute monologues and portrayed the stories of a British Afro-Caribbean family across four generations, from their arrival to the UK in the 1940s to the present day. It was jointly produced by BBC Arts, Young Vic Theatre, and Sir Lenny Henry's Douglas Road Productions. The series was curated by Young Vic's artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah and featured writings from prominent playwrights of British Afro-Caribbean heritage.
The series was nominated for Best Short Form in the 2020 British Academy Television Awards and writer Roy Williams, who wrote episode 7, was nominated for Best Writer in the Drama category at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards in the same year.
Background Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle aired in 2019, a year after the 50th anniversary of the arrival of a major wave of Caribbean migrants in the United Kingdom, who would later be known as the Windrush generation. Several real life events were woven into the series' narratives, including the New Cross house fire in 1981, Murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, the 2011 Tottenham riot, as well as the Windrush scandal. For curator Kwame Kwei-Armah, the series was a personal tribute to his late parents, who had migrated to the UK from Grenada in the early 1960s.
Sir Lenny Henry, executive producer for the series spoke of the monologue format chosen for the programme:“Little monologues are a great thing. It’s somebody talking down the camera about specific issues and telling stories. Particularly in the developing world, we come from an oral tradition of people looking you in the eye and telling you a story. So I thought it was a perfect environment to tell the stories you may not have heard before about the black community.”The series was broadcast from 17 to 20 February 2019 on BBC Four and was part of its season of programming dedicated to the celebration of British diverse history. It is also included in Young Vic's festival on the theme of identity, YV:ID. A discussion panel about the show featuring Kwei-Armah and British author Afua Hirsch took place as part of the festival on 21 February 2019.
Episodes
Reception The series received overall positive reviews across major British newspapers, receiving 4 out of 5 stars from both The Guardian and The Telegraph. The Evening Standard praised the show for its ability to pack in profound messages, such as those concerning identity and belonging, without feeling like a lecture. Lenny Henry's performance as Cyrus in episode 7 was universally praised. As noted by the Evening Standard: "Henry gives a moving performance: funny, likeable and asking broad philosophical questions about the toll that immigration takes on a family".
The series won the Diversity in Drama Production category at the 2019 Screen Nation Film and Television Awards. It also received a nomination at the 2020 British Academy Television Awards for Best Short Form, in addition to Roy Williams's nomination for Best Drama Writer at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards in the same year.
+Awards and nominations received by Soon Gone: A Windrush ChronicleYearAwards ceremonyCategoryNominee(s)ResultNote/Refs2019Screen Nation Film and Television AwardsDiversity in Drama Production2020Royal Television Society Programme AwardsWriter (Drama)Roy Williams2020BAFTA Television AwardsBest Short Form
References