Voyage of hope

Sir Lenny Henry draws on his family history for a post-Windrush drama

- CAREN CLARK, REBECCA MAHONEY, STEVEN PERKINS

NEW DRAMA

Three Little Birds

Sunday, 8pm, ITV1 (box set, ITVX)

An unassuming social club in Nuneaton has been transformed into a 1950s restaurant as TV&Satellite Week steps on to the set of Three Little Birds, Sir Lenny Henry’s six-part drama about three women emigrating from Jamaica to the UK in 1957.

It follows sisters Leah (Guilt’s Rochelle Neil) and Chantrelle (Small Axe star Saffron Coomber) as they head to England to join their brother Aston (Dodger’s Javone Prince). In response to his request for a suitable woman to marry, they’re joined by their friend Hosanna (Yazmin Belo, making her TV debut).

All three women hope that a fresh start in ‘the mother country’ will bring new opportunities, but the reception they get in chilly England is a long way from what they were promised…

‘I don’t think anyone could have prepared them for the cold and damp compared to Jamaica,’ Neil tells us. ‘But Leah is also shocked by the hostilities. Our story is set almost 10 years after Windrush, but a lot of people really didn’t want the Caribbean community to settle and stay – I’m a product of that, and my grannies in real life were shocked by the disconnect.’