BBC1, Left Bank prep Windrush drama

BBC1 in the UK has commissioned a feature-length drama from The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures focusing on the Windrush immigration scandal.

Piers Wenger

Sitting in Limbo will examine the controversy that erupted last year when, as part of the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy towards immigration, many citizens who had legally emigrated from the Caribbean 50 years ago to staff the country’s NHS and public services had their right to live and work in the UK revoked. Hundreds of them originally travelled to the UK on HMT Empire Windrush.

The show is the first TV work from Stephen S Thompson (Toy Soldiers) and will focus on the true story of his brother, Anthony Bryan, who was caught up in the Windrush scandal.

The 1×90’ drama will follow Bryan, who had lived in the UK since he was eight but found there was no record of him as a British citizen when he went to apply for a passport to visit his elderly mother in Jamaica. He was subsequently left unemployed and unable to claim benefits, before being seized from his home and detained as an illegal immigrant in the early hours of the morning.

Commissioned by Piers Wenger, controller of BBC Drama, and Charlotte Moore, director of BBC content, the drama is set in 2016, four years after the coalition government introduced the hostile environment policy.