Steve McQueen’s John Boye­ga-star­ring minis­eries is arriv­ing this year

In recent months, John Boye­ga has proven him­self beyond all shad­ow of a doubt to be a real one. He was on the front lines of the police bru­tal­i­ty protests, speak­ing can­did­ly about the sor­ry state of racial inequal­i­ty in the UK with­out a care as to how it could affect his career prospects in the future. He signed a deal with Net­flix to expand their African pro­duc­tions back in March, and his com­mit­ment to fur­ther­ing the cause of Black enter­tain­ment will con­tin­ue lat­er this year on the small screen.

An item from Dead­line today con­tained a first look at Boye­ga in the upcom­ing TV movie anthol­o­gy series Small Axe, squaresville hair­do and all. Though, to be fair, that’s just peri­od detail – he por­trays real-life offi­cer Leroy Logan as he works to clean up London’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police depart­ment from the inside out after wit­ness­ing his father’s assault at the hands of two cops.

Boye­ga stars in the fea­ture-length episode ​‘Red, White and Blue’, one of five films direct­ed by Steve McQueen that will col­lec­tive­ly com­prise Small Axe. The oth­er episodes (‘Alex Whea­tle’, ​‘Edu­ca­tion’, ​‘Man­grove’, and ​‘Lovers Rock’, the lat­ter two hav­ing been select­ed to play at the can­celed Cannes Film Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year and this fall’s New York Film Fest) also speak to life expe­ri­ences in the West Indi­an com­mu­ni­ty of Lon­don between the 1960s and ​’80s, the guid­ing theme of the series.

Leroy fought valiant­ly to improve law enforce­ment in Lon­don, devel­op­ing anti-racism poli­cies that earned him a knight­hood from the Queen in 2001. All the same, he was still a police­man – by the end of his career, a super­in­ten­dent – and pos­i­tive depic­tions of police have got­ten increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial as the pub­lic has engaged with ques­tions of com­plic­i­ty in bro­ken sys­tems. Boyega’s per­for­mance will sure­ly ush­er in a fresh wave of debate over whether there real­ly is such a thing as a good cop.

Though a pre­mière date has yet to be set, the series will run after the sem­blance of fes­ti­val sea­son lat­er this year, on the BBC in the UK and on Ama­zon in the US. McQueen’s last full film, Wid­ows, also cov­ered the sub­ject of police vio­lence and insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion, though it would appear he’s tack­ling the sub­ject more direct­ly with Small Axe. Brace for discourse!