What The BBC Gets Right About Black America

America couldn’t have produced ‘American High School’

As Americans, it’s basically our patriotic duty to be deeply enamored with The American Experience. But in a rapidly diversifying country of a few hundred million, it’s hard to agree on what that looks like. One thing we all know? Being a teenager is hard. Like, really hard.

The four fraught years of high school have long been a staple of pop culture, but their on-screen depiction remains largely tied to the white, upper-middle class experience. After 80-odd years of watching proms and pep rallies, it took the Brits to show us something we haven’t seen before.

The town of Orangeburg, South Carolina, is 75% black and has a median income of around $30,000. BBC Three’s American High School follows Principal Stephen G. Peters and a group of seniors at Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School for six episodes over one year. It’s hard to imagine John Hughes or Richard Linklater setting up at OW, where over 80% of students are on the free or reduced lunch program. In 2016, the typical high school experience can mean escaping cycles of violence, navigating crumbling institutions and keeping their family above water, on top of the typical teenage trials and traumas.

The de facto protagonist is a new principal tasked with raising standardized test scores. Stephen G. Peters is well aware of what’s at stake — higher test scores mean more funding, more scholarships, and in this case, lives saved. Like himself, Principal Peters’ style is at once neat and exuberant: he sports yellow silk ties and paisley shirts anchored by crisp pocket squares. It’s a tangible way to highlight his commitment to the job, but it’s no glamour play.

“Don’t get it twisted, don’t let this suit fool you,” he stresses. “I go in the hood. I’m from the hood.”

On test day he plants himself in a doorway, shaking hands, addressing everyone individually.

“You ready?” he asks. “I’m counting on you”.

That’s not to say the hallmarks of high school fare are absent here — in fact, it’s the sharp contrasts that make this show as impactful as it is. A seemingly innocuous shot of a bustling hallway ends with a security guard wrestling a kid into a headlock. About half of the airtime is devoted to natural, cozy interviews with students. They’re seniors, so they’re disillusioned and restless, but the stakes will always be higher here. In the hands of kids whose lives may hang in the balance, classic high school refrains like, “I just want to get out of this town,” .

In Orangeburg, the danger comes in layers: there’s the immediate and physical — the first episode has a kid’s eye cut by brass knuckles in the cafeteria — but it’s South Carolina, and confederate flags litter the show, a reminder that some threats won’t disappear at graduation.

OW students are obviously used to being underestimated, and they’re well aware of how low expectations are. “We’re not just that ratchet school in Orangeburg. We’re actually pretty smart kids.”

AHS is beautifully shot. The camera plays with intimacy and isolation, pulling back on low-slung brick buildings choked by heavy skies, looming trees that threaten to swallow cars whole, an immobile semi declaring ‘TRUMP’ to an empty field. Inside, though, the school is ablaze in OW Bruins orange. Shots here are tight but never lose a sense of motion, we linger on light glinting off a trumpet, sweat dripping from a forehead, ‘good luck’ scrawled on a hand.

The show’s earliest standouts are Kordel Johnson and Jalena Jones, both 17, driven and self-possessed, but at opposite ends of the social spectrum. In Hughes parlance, Jalena is AHS’ Molly Ringwald. She’s in seemingly every club OW offers, has applied to 17 colleges and lives with her father, a factory worker.

In a rare interjection, a producer asks, “is there anything you’re not, Jalena?” she hesitates, squares her shoulders. “A quitter.”

Kordel is a wide-receiver on the high-ranked OW Bruins football team, but he refuses to be a stereotype.

“That perception of us being jocks and just picking on kids, it’s not really like that. We just go to class, man. We’re tryna survive. You’re just always trying to make it to the next day.”

His only goal is to get to college, but as a young, confident black man, he is frequently frustrated by attempts to keep him in his place.

“Everybody been telling me since the third grade: Kordel you cocky, you just too this and too that.”

It’s apparent that the distance the BBC has to issues like gun violence serves them well here; Hearing school administrators give the practical (and legal) explanation for having an armed officer in the school is a good reminder that this is a uniquely American problem. Through their eyes, it’s easy to remember that there’s no other first world country where going to school feels like going to war.

Principal Peters has an ally in football coach Tommy Brown, who prefers to measure his success in scholarships over championships. His players aren’t without a love for the game, but, as with Kordel, it’s widely seen as a means to an end. College is the goal, the NFL would be a nice bonus. For that reason, it’d be easy for Brown to promise his players the world, but he knows better — so do they. An estimated 7% of high school football players play in college. Of that 7%, under 2% will go pro.

The OW Bruins are a formidable team, but like everything else here, success is never that simple. One of the tragedies of young black athletes is that low support combined with high pressure means there is huge incentive for students, their families and their schools to view their future as inextricable from athletics.

“They prepare us athletically,” says Kordel. “But academically? uh, no.”

A show like this has to navigate around several pitfalls common in the white-filmmakers-go-to-the hood genre. So many productions end up, intentionally or not, condescending to the very people they’re trying to lift up. AHS has a genuine, warm empathy that’s sorely lacking in other network docuseries. The show allows students to tell their stories without a pat on the head for being articulate. The hallmarks of reality show editing — choppy cuts, cut-and-paste dialogue — are also absent. It seems the producers have realized there is very little fat to trim.

Kordel says it best: “I’m a diamond, and I ain’t no uncut diamond. I’m polished.”

A single game could be a player’s ticket out, but watching the locker room before kick-off, you’d never know what’s at stake. For a little while, they can just be kids, and they are: puffing their chests out, giving each other nicknames, posing for the camera.

It’s not until later, when the game’s over and the crowd’s gone, that you remember. In the silence, a lone player walks out onto the field. He drops to his knees and tilts his face up to the arena lights. As dusk falls in Orangeburg, he says a prayer.