Barrington Jedidiah Walker has been eyeing a climb up a very tall mountain for a very long time. Dream as he might about someday grinning down from its peak and beholding the rewards of his ascent, he remains stuck at his low-elevation base camp, where swirling clouds and the clamor of civilization and its entanglements below freeze him in place, unable to carry on.
He explains his lack of progress to himself as just a long spell of not-quite-right timing.
Surely, he tells his closest, life-long confidant who has been a regular, supportive visitor with Barrington as they gaze at the towering peak above: the clouds will part at some near-future time. Then the demands of the world will be less constraining, and conditions will allow him to begin gaining some proper elevation.
The problem is that his thwarted ascent has now kept him stuck at base camp for some 60 of the 75 years he has inhabited this earth. Time marching on as it does, he has grown old and white-haired while finding seemingly endless sources of passing pleasures with which to amuse himself and the many visitors he has entertained while mired far below the peak.
These many decades later, he now allows himself only an occasional wistful glance upwards.
This is the plight of Barrington, known by all who love and marvel at him and his garrulous, dapper ways as Barry, a twinkle-eyed man-about-London-town whose long-repressed secret is that he remains scared half to death at making any progress up that mountain for fear of what the world will discover about him if he were ever to stand astride it, claiming it as his own.
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“Mr. Loverman” is a 2014 novel by Bernardine Evaristo that became an eight-part BBC One miniseries last October. It stars British actor Lennie James in the title role, under the direction of Cambodian-born, British immigrant Hong Khaou.
It’s hard to take your eyes off James, which is exactly how his Barry wants it. Until, that is, you try to probe too deeply under his alternately sunny, earnest, and oft-jesting Caribbean patois that keeps everyone in his circle charmed—and almost no one privy to the thwarted self he has pushed so far down below the surface as to mostly evade even his own acknowledgment.
Barry is a gay man who fell in love with his lifelong body-and-soulmate Morris when they were both teenagers, cavorting around their native Antigua amidst crystalline waters and the half-insane, desperate imperatives of a first grand love. Very much mutual, that love has somehow survived each of their marriages, their children, their emigration, and their regular, still-secret dalliances under the cover of being near-inseparable childhood chums.
Morris is now divorced but Barry remains married after 50 years to the long-suffering but duty-bound Carmel, a frown ever-present just above the crucifix around her neck.
Meanwhile, age and decades of Barry’s pleas to be patient are forcing a reckoning for Morris. Barry understands and soothes, but ever the evader, answers Morris’s urging that he finally declare himself a homosexual with a typical witticism: “I ain’t no homosexual. I am a Barrr-ry-sexual.”
Still, he sounds other, intermittent notes about one day, sooner rather than later, claiming his true self, framing his struggle in a voiceover, “This is what happens when 75 percent of your life is in the past. Each step forward triggers a step backward.”
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Our storytellers Evaristo, Khaou and scriptwriter Nathaniel Price weave a rich, multi-layered tale that probes deeply into struggles of sexual orientation, race, class, immigration, marriage, inter-generational conflict, and the most foundational human psychology issues of this and every other time: Who am I? Am I living as that self? What is my deepest heart’s desire? Am I living toward it?
And decades later, if we have survived all the traps, hazards and tragedies that can befall us in this life: What have I become? What are my accomplishments, satisfactions, regrets? What would I do differently?
Followed by the capstone question: Can I forgive? (Not just others, but myself.)
It seems to have become a hallmark of modern film and television to take viewers abruptly into flashback sequences that require instant recognition by viewers that we have morphed into a different era with the same characters we were just watching moments before. Depending on the timeframe, the technique can employ younger actors who look plausibly enough like their older characters decades hence, or else ingenious makeup artists and hairdressers make the same actor look alternately 40 and 75, with the actor adding his or her own flourishes to make the age continuum look flawless.
When done artfully as it is in “Mr. Loverman,” we get valuable information and imagery that lends roundness to the characters, and enhances our appreciation for their struggles. (Would that we could employ such flashbacks on demand in real life, though children today may well be able to access the whole of their childhoods through the wonders of phone cameras and ever-dutiful parents…)
Seeing Barry, Morris, Carmel and the other deftly drawn characters toggled back and forth along the continuum of their lives, we become privy to key moments stamped indelibly into their stories, the narrative arc that shaped who and how they went about the task of becoming. What we wind up with as viewers is an utterly absorbing, profoundly human unfolding that Mary and I had to actively avoid binge-watching so we could better absorb the experience, spreading the half-hour segments over four days, two per night.
Although the concluding segment seemed to tie up various loose ends a bit too neatly, what remains is an acute, textured drama of a man squaring off against his culture and himself. The culture for its continuing marginalization of gay life, himself for refusing to recognize both how that culture had at least somewhat changed, and how his fear, denial, and evasions had foisted such acute pain and unfulfillment not only upon himself, but on those he had always loved.
Add to that regular comic moments and the rich color palette of London street life and the shores of Antigua, and you’ve got just the right conditions for an extended, soul-satisfying entertainment it’s easy to both love and think about long after it concludes.
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How do you get BBC One? We have a Passport, but I haven’t ever seen this offered there.
Sorry, and thanks for asking; I’d thought to list the platform but alas, it slipped through the recurrent crack of memory!—it’s on Amazon Prime.
Thanks.
Thanks for the heads up on “Mr. Loverman,” Claire and I began watching it late last night but didn’t finish the first episode. The sandman, an uninvited guest, rudely knocked on our door and spoiled the evening. Up to that point, it was great. Riveting dinner scene. I’ll email you my final review.
By the way, it’s also available on Brit Box where we’re watching it.
Oh man, the Sandman on a Saturday nite? Rude indeed. Thanks for the platform update—it will forever irritate me that turning on the damn television or radio now requires a half-hour and Ph.D in digital technology. This is progress??