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Trevor McDonald & Charlene White: Has George Floyd Changed Britain? review: a thoughtful, measured account

Charlene White and Sir Trevor McDonald - ITV
Charlene White and Sir Trevor McDonald - ITV

A sense of running to catch up pervades ITV’s reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement. The broadcaster now has a “diversity acceleration plan” but always seems to be on the back foot: reacting to criticism that its daytime presenting teams are too white; being forced to part ways with Piers Morgan.

A series of dramas told from a black perspective, Unsaid Stories, was aired last year but each story was only 15 minutes, making the whole thing feel like an afterthought. Finally, though, they’ve added some gravitas, in the form of Sir Trevor McDonald.

Trevor McDonald & Charlene White: Has George Floyd Changed Britain? looked back at the past year and asked if the murder of a man in Minnesota will have a lasting legacy in this country. It approached the subject from a journalistic perspective, interviewing various people who have come to attention over the last year.

They included Patrick Hutchinson, a black man who rescued a white counter-protester from a BLM protest by carrying him to safety; Bianca Williams, a British Olympic athlete who accused police of racial profiling after she and her partner were removed from their car and handcuffed; David Lascelles, 8th Earl of Harewood, who has publicly confronted the fact that his family wealth was built on the profits of slavery.

These interviews were interspersed with McDonald and White watching the footage of Floyd’s death and giving their own perspectives on race. Although the documentary was well-constructed, there was little new here, save for a decent interview with Foreign Office minister James Cleverly.

The real merit was in listening to McDonald give his thoughtful, measured take on subjects including Floyd’s arrest (“This was brutality… it’s not in any police manual that this is the way you arrest somebody”), and institutions making BLM gestures (“Slogans are great, but let’s see some action”). He claimed that members of the younger generation are “much smarter and brighter than people like me ever were”, but I’d beg to differ.