You Don't Know Me (Netflix series)

  Sarmad Masud’s four-episode drama is a remarkable achievement: a searing exploration of racism that doesn’t mention the term. In this courtroom drama the British social system is the implicit villain and the drama’s characters its victims. Nowhere is the West's white persecution of the black stated but it pervades. 

The series opens with the prosecution lawyer (white, stern) lengthily detailing the young black accused man’s apparent guilt. The evidence is overwhelming. As this is TV-land we sophisticates may immediately conclude the guy must therefore be innocent. But it’s not that simple.

For the ensuing drama the defendant recounts the events that led to the drug-dealer’s murder and his own imprisonment. We may be tempted to reject the implausibility of a judge allowing such a lengthy statement by the accused. But if we stick with it — and each episode’s closing cliffhanger makes that easy — the payoff is considerable. 

The sweeping conviction of the prosecutor’s opening summary makes the drama’s title the hero’s defence. “You don’t know me.” From its secure perch the white world cannot know the underclass.  

The cast is largely Black. The jury is melting-pot mixed but the prosecuting team and the judge are white. The defendant fires his white lawyer because she won’t adjust her systemic process to his needs. Hence his four-episode monologue, enacted. He continually tries to set himself outside the black stereotype: “I sell cars.” They’re high-price cars, for a supportive white boss. Here the power is implicitly white, swallowing the stereotype of the criminal black.

That underclass turns into underworld. The black criminals wage their own internecine war. Smalltime dealer Jamil rises to relative kingpin because he hasn’t the hero’s will to detach from the street corner career. Even the flashy Jamil falls prey to his (black) overlord, the deceptively amiable Face. 

Jamil provides another play of the drama’s title. His own family is hitherto unaware of his drug career. If it’s a wise father that knows his son, it’s a wise society that truly knows its underclass, knows what has shaped it and responds with support not oppression. 

In contrast to Jamil’s family, the hero’s comprises a generous, loving mother, a sister tellingly named as a positive verb — Bless — and an old childhood friend, Curt, who tersely leaves the enemy’s thrall to support the hero. Out of respect for family, the hero endangers himself by alerting Jamil’s family to his whereabouts.  

These loyalties and challenges are amplified in the hero’s lover Kyra. She is an entirely engaging character — a sensitive, moral, beautiful, avid reader! —  who challenges her lover, his family — and us — with her own moral ambiguity. Her support for her jailed brother Spook, who betrayed the powerful gang, gives them an ineluctable grip on her. When they pull her back into prostitution the hero risks all to retrieve her — and with his family’s support. Bless reduces his dilemma to the simple but central question: “Do you love her?” That answered, he knows what to do.   

The drama’s ending is a Gordian knot that plays on our moral and racial judgments. We read the conclusion through a miasma of betrayals, rationalizations, compromises. It’s not a simple black and white.