The tragic relevance of Sarah Solemani’s Ridley Road
IN THE FIRST EPISODE of new BBC drama Ridley Road, a young Jewish woman finds herself in the middle of a neo-nazi protest. Burly men surround her, screaming racist chants. ‘I think we like to tell ourselves that Nazis and swastikas died with Hitler,’ says Sarah Solemani, the show’s creator. ‘But in 1962, it was legal to get a permit and have swastikas flying around and [speakers] talking about Jews being the maggots of Europe.’
Ridley Road has special significance to Sarah. She’s lived in Dalston, east London, where the story is set. Her father is Jewish and she converted to Judaism herself. Sarah knew she wanted to adapt Ridley Road when she read Jo Bloom’s novel of the same name, eight years ago. The story follows young hairdresser Vivien (played by Agnes O’casey in her first job out of drama school). After moving to London in search of a man she had a brief romance with, she discovers the dark side of the ’60s; fascist groups are on the rise spreading racists ideas and attacking minorities. In an act of love and fearlessness, Vivien finds herself undercover in one of these organisations.
It’s a departure from Bloom’s original story. ‘I kind of invented where the book left off,’ says Sarah. ‘I loved that she was a hairdresser and the description of hair and beauty in the salon. It’s not this girly, frivolous thing, it was her power. The power of disguise and of being good with people, those were her weapons.’ It’s incredibly timely. This summer, reports of antisemitism (and Islamaphobia) in the UK rose dramatically amid the developing Israel-gaza crisis. ‘That was the sad irony,’ says Sarah. ‘It was a long process to get the green light for this show. With every year that passed, it would become more and more tragically relevant.’
Sarah rose to fame as a star of Baftawinning comedy Him & Her. When the BBC’S anti-romcom finished in 2013, she picked up a slew of TV roles before stealing the show in Bridget Jones’s Baby as the heroine’s wild work wife. She also stole the premiere, turning up wearing a dazzling dress and a sign that read, ‘Budget the baby. Fund crèches on film sets’. It’s a cause she’s still fighting for. ‘Tom Hardy insists on having a childcare bus on all his productions and I’m trying to do the same. We need Pinewood [Studios] to sign up. We’ve got the plans, we have the childcares buses, they just need to sign off on it so that film-makers don’t have to choose between parenting and their careers.’
Following Ridley Road, her next project, Chivalry, is with Channel 4. Sarah plays a young writer to Steve Coogan’s lothario film producer. Co-written with Steve, it’s a comedic exploration of romance in the post #Metoo era. ‘Steve and I had these debates that got quite heated; how do men and women talk to each other post #Metoo? Has it gone too far? What is chivalry? How do they fancy each other, how do they fall in love; what if you fell in love with an old white dinosaur but you’re a woke feminist? And how do you honour the survivors, and the pain and abuse, and make it funny? It’s such a fine line.’ Sarah says it’s one of the most challenging projects she’s worked on
– is she confident she got it right? ‘Oh it’s funny as hell,’ she asserts. ‘It’s like fire.’
‘Ridley Road’ is on BBC One on Sundays at 9pm and is available on iplayer