WHAT TO WATCH SMALL AXE: RED, WHITE AND BLUE

BBC One, 9pm

Peckham’s very own Star Wars star (and, for some of us, the even more fondly remembered hero of Attack the Block), John Boyega is the major draw for the third film in director Steve McQueen’s powerful series exploring black British lives. Boyega plays real-life policereform advocate Leroy Logan who, after studying for a PhD, gave up a promising career in research science to join the Metropolitan Police as a constable in the 1980s, determined to change the institutionally racist force from within. This was after his Jamaican father (Steve Toussaint) was assaulted by two Met Police officers, and at a time when black faces on the force were few and far between.

In some ways it is a familiar story of defiance in the face of persistent prejudice, and of the stress and loneliness of finding yourself hated and distrusted by people on both sides of the divide you are striving to bridge. But Boyega’s quietly simmering performance sustains a strong emotional connection (that he only occasionally boils over makes it all the more powerful) and makes up for occasional longueurs in the slowburning script by McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland. A timely and thoughtful exploration of a thorny issue. Gerard O’Donovan

John Boyega plays a police officer fighting racism in the Met