I read Steve Rose’s piece on the British Film Institute’s Forgotten Black TV Drama season (‘What the hell are we here for?’, G2, 7 February) with interest.
It reminded me that some friends who had watched a recent episode of Luther that I missed told me there was a reference in it to a Wolcott Road.
As there is no Wolcott Road in London, I took this to be a backhanded homage to the 1981 ITV miniseries Wolcott, which also had as its titular protagonist a black Metropolitan police CID detective.
One reason I recall that particular show is that, with my late and lamented friend Barry Wasserman, I co-wrote it.
Patrick Carroll
Helston, Cornwall
• Referring to Steve Rose’s article, it’s interesting to note that the British film industry was years ahead of both the BBC and the US.
In 1951 the British film Pool of London was released in which the parts played by the black actor Earl Cameron and the white actor Susan Shaw developed a relationship that featured kissing; racial prejudice was also featured in the story.
It’s also interesting to note that the film ran into censorship problems in the US at the time because of their interracial relationship.
In the light of this, for anyone to assume that US cinema and TV “blazed the trail when it came to representation of black people on screen” is demonstrably wrong.
Steve Moore
Leumeah, New South Wales, Australia
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