Meera Syal criticises lack of Asian people on British TV
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Version 0 of 1. The representation of Asian people on British television has moved backwards amid a conservative climate that favours nostalgia and period drama, according to the writer and actor Meera Syal. Asian people were often treated as issues rather than people, she said in an interview with the Radio Times in which she suggested the groundbreaking sitcom she helped create, Goodness Gracious Me, could return in a different format. “I think we’ve slightly gone backwards. Some of the stuff I’d want to have on TV wouldn’t get on at the moment,” she said. “It’s a conservative climate with lots of period pieces and lots of nostalgia. When people think of stuff with South Asians in, it tends to be programmes like the upcoming Rochdale abuse drama [Three Girls]. Of course it’s not like those things don’t happen, but if that’s all that TV is doing, it looks like that’s the only thing Asians do. “It’s a problem. If there were five or six or seven shows on TV featuring South Asians, then absolutely Rochdale is a worthy subject to investigate – but it’s about context. We should also be thinking about stories that just show us as people, not issues.” Syal’s comments come less than a week after the actor Riz Ahmed warned that a lack of minority representation on screen risked driving young people towards religious extremism. “If we fail to represent, we are in danger of losing people to extremism,” he told an audience at parliament. “In the mind of the Isis recruit, he’s the next James Bond, right? Have you seen some of those Isis propaganda videos? They are cut like action movies. Where is the counter-narrative? Where are we telling these kids they can be heroes in our stories, that they are valued?” Broadcasters have made progress in terms of diversity in their workforces, with the BBC recently announcing that 14.5% of its on- and off-screen staff were from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Sharon White, the chief executive of the regulator Ofcom, has said higher diversity targets for broadcasters may be necessary. Industry figures, such as Sir Lenny Henry, have previously criticised the limited range of narratives about minorities, which they say created the impression there “there was only one story from each ethnic group”. Syal rose to fame in the mid-1990s with Goodness Gracious Me, one of the first prime-time shows to focus on life as an Asian in Britain. Syal said the team behind the show had more material which they would like to bring to audiences, albeit in a different format. “We don’t want to redo something for the sake of it, but we’re discussing something,” she said. “We’d like to bring our brand of humour back but in a different format. We have to be confident we’ve got the material and I think we have. We’re gathering it. That could well happen.” |