**Spoilers Ahead **
Recently, I took some time out of my standard watch list and sat down to watch a crime show. A short, four episode series that left me reeling. Now, I’m not one to watch crime series often, after falling down the rabbit hole of true crime during covid that so many of us did, and consuming story after story of the brutal murders, rapes, and violence enacted against women, I could no longer stomach it. Sure, one could argue that most crime series follow men, they are fictional, and oftentimes they are a critique of the justice system itself, as You Don’t Know Me is. However, when you begin to engage with the media you consume through a critical lens, you see the injustices in the real world paralleled on the screen, and it gets heavy. But I decided to bite the bullet, put on my big girl pants, and prepare myself for a story that I knew would impact me far more deeply than Sex and The City.
Curling up on the couch next to my grandma, we hit play on You Don’t Know Me, the 2021 series starring Samuel Adewunmi and Sophie Wilde. And within the first five minutes we were hooked.
You Don’t Know Me tells the story of Hero, or more specifically, the story of Kyra and Bless. See, recently I’ve noticed a misunderstanding between the terms protagonist and main character. And while it is Hero that stands on trial, and Hero that tells the story, Hero who is the protagonist. It is Kyra who is the main character, this is her story told through the eyes of the man who loves her. Secondly, it is Bless’s story, Hero’s younger sister. She is the glue that holds their world together, connects and reunites them. She solidifies their relationship to one another and keeps them tethered between two worlds. Thirdly, the story is Hero’s. It becomes the story of those he loves, and how he would do anything for them. Put himself in harms way, lie, kill, and take blame to protect those around him.
It is love that propels this story forward. But that is not what makes it so powerful. There are plenty of stories about love, about a man who will do anything for the woman that means the world to him. That will go to the ends of the earth to take her away from a life of pain even if it means the end of his world. Curiously enough, this story greatly parallels another in themes of trials of love, Moulin Rouge. And while I don’t want to give too many spoilers, when you see this series you will understand what I mean.
Moulin Rouge (2001)
You Don't Know Me (2021)
So what does make this series so powerful? Well, in my opinion it is a blend of things. Firstly, there is the central theme of socioeconomic disparity. Then, there are the themes of racism and ethnic differentiation. Thirdly, there is love. Now, I am not British so I won’t pretend to understand the extreme intricacies of British socioeconomics and class relations. Instead, I will look at it from my stance across the pond and my position as a Canadian who knows that there is a major difference in what racism and class discrimination looks like in Canada versus Britain.
As the show starts off, we are introduced to Hero and Kyra and they are presented to us as though they are in similar socioeconomic status. They both ride the same bus, live within the same-ish area, are well dressed, well read, and have nicely furnished apartments. As we begin to switch from Kyra’s apartment to Hero’s apartment theres very little difference between the two. We, as well as Hero see them as the same, on equal playing fields. With the only indicator of difference being Kyra’s refusal to speak about her family or her past. But that can mean anything, to us as the audience and to Hero. We can choose to overlook it, to believe that she has left a hard life behind and moved on to something better, something more secure.
However, as the story develops we learn that this couldn’t be further from the truth. And as we see the story through Hero’s eyes, when we see this we are meant to judge her, as Hero judges her. We see her standing under a bridge, ‘protected’ by a man who takes money from John’s and ushers her into their cars. Much like Hero we are meant to be in shock, and appalled. How could she leave someone who loved her so deeply, who cared for her and cherished her for a life on the streets? That is the feeling we are meant to have, and most people who I have talked to about this show told me that was how they felt. And that is what the director wants, for us to sit in our middle class apartments, judging someone for a life we can’t or simply don’t want to understand. But, as it all unravels we are hit in the face with the realization that we judge her because we cannot comprehend why she would place herself in this position. We give her ownership of her own life and decisions because we operate from a place of ownership over ourselves and our bodies.
The truth of the matter is that we are one step closer to Kyra than we will ever be to the class above us. And Hero’s descent into this life shoves that reality down our throat in an uncomfortable yet necessary way. Because, this series is not fictitious, sure the story and the characters may be, but the reality of it all is that a life of crime, of drugs, of prostitution derives from desperation, from survival. Each character we see in this show with ties to gangs and violence, Kyra, Jamil, Spook, are all scared and trying to survive. And for them, sometimes the only way to survive is to do the unthinkable. To kill others before they kill you. To sell drugs to keep you and your family above water. To sell your body to keep the people you love, and yourself alive.
What I loved so much about this series is that Hero calls out the jury - who are one and the same with the audience - that we (they) could never understand until we ourselves would have to experience something like that. In the same way he didn’t, until his world unraveled and within less than a year he went from a respectful care salesman, to a man who had tried crack, shot a man, robbed a drug dealer, and associated with gangs. He forces us to look at the very real effects of poverty and the ways in which the middle and upper classes contribute to the continuation of crime and exploitation of those in poor communities by refusing to acknowledge the context in which these crimes take place.
The fact that for the duration of the story Hero is on trial and telling us about the evidence in context rather than the evidence as it is presented by the prosecutor only further the complex relationships between poverty and the judicial system. We are entitled to a jury of our peers, yet how can that be the case when the jury does not consist of those from the same socioeconomic background as the person being tried, when it is made up of people who have no ties to a life of poverty in the way that Hero does. Because, while he may have sat in the same position as them financially at the start of the series, his life has been changed in a way that the jury not only can’t understand, but already has preconceived biases towards because more often than not, evidence against these crimes is presented without the context of what led to the events in the first place. Add on top of this the racial biases that Hero faces as a black man involved with gang related activities and the chances of him being acquitted drop even more drastically.
Image courtesy of BBC
This is highlighted in the show's conclusion, or lack thereof as we are given two possibilities. One: Hero is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Jamil. Two: The jury believes Hero and analyzes the evidence presented within context and he goes free, back to Kyra, back to a life filled with love and freedom. And while we are given the chance to decide which ending Hero gets, I choose to believe that he goes free. I believe that the director intentionally chose for the first option to be Hero getting life in prison, as this is the more likely outcome, and ending it with him living freely as this is the outcome we all hope for him.
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