My Name is Leon is a powerful single-part TV drama, aired in June 2022 on BBC1 (now available on BBC iplayer.) It is based on the international-best selling book of the same name by Kit de Waal.
Click to play BBC trailer (external link to YouTube):
Warning: This drama contains violence and upsetting scenes, considered unsuitable for younger viewers (BBC Guidance)
Told through the eyes of nine-year old Leon (Cole Martin), a mixed race boy in 1980s Birmingham, we follow his journey into the care system with his white half-baby brother, Jake. The siblings are placed into foster care after their mum’s mental health crisis. The brothers are eventually separated into different foster care settings, leaving a distraught Leon mother and brotherless.
The drama’s airing is timely as the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care’ report (‘The MacAlister Report’)1 has just been published. The report highlights the importance of kinship care and how separating siblings is devastating to children.
The drama follows Leon’s foster placement with Maureen (Monica Dolan), who offers him Curly Wurly chocolate bars at every turn and his gradual discovery of a community of black gardeners on the local allotment plots. “Tufty” (Malachi Kirby) gradually becomes a father figure, teaching him about growing plants, race and family.
It is an astonishing drama, telling the narrative from a child’s perspective, without descending into mawkish storytelling.
