The search for justice

Patrick Robinson on playing an innocent man caught up in the Windrush scandal.

- Victoria Wilson

SITTING IN LIMBO

NEW MONDAY / BBC1 / 8.30PM / DRAMA

Anthony Bryan was eight years old when in 1965 he travelled from the West Indies, on his older brother’s passport, to join his mum who was working as a seamstress in London.

Then 51 years later, the life Anthony had made for himself in the capital was turned upside down after he applied for a passport to visit his elderly mother who had returned to Jamaica.

Despite having been in London for five decades, and paying his taxes as a painter and decorator, there was no record of Anthony being a British citizen.

Sent to an immigration detention centre and threatened with deportation, it was then left to Anthony to prove his right to remain here to the Home Office.

Anthony’s story is at the heart of what has since become known as the Windrush scandal, and it is told in Sitting in Limbo, a new 90-minute BBC1 drama, written by his brother, Stephen S Thompson.