Lenny Henry's Caribbean Britain

When Lenny Henry was young, his mother had one word of advice: integrate. This he did in a public way, telling jokes against himself on New Faces and featuring in The Fosters, Britain’s first sitcom with a predominantly black cast (but brought to the screen by a white production team). It was, he admits, comedy with the barriers up, a defensive strategy that saw him crack the gags before the racists could.

But that outlook was to change, and Henry would eventually decide to be truer to himself, with his stand-up act becoming more reflective of his own experiences. In this new two-part series, he shares, with admirable honesty, that journey of self-discovery, while also offering up a brisk overview of the impact of Caribbean culture on the UK. Tonight he considers the postwar popularity of calypso and ska, as well as the lowlights of growing racial tensions and police brutality.