Writer rejects ‘self-righteous’ critics in race row over colonial drama

A RACE row surrounding ITV’S new drama, The Singapore Grip, is the fault of “self-righteous” social media critics, its screenwriter has claimed.

Christopher Hampton has adapted JG Farrell’s novel, which follows the fortunes of a wealthy British trader and his family in 1940s Malaya before and during the fall of Singapore. It begins tomorrow, and features David Morrissey, Jane Horrocks and Charles Dance.

BEATS, an advocacy group for British East and South East Asians in television and theatre, condemned the drama’s “generic stereotyping and aggressive tokenism”. That criticism was amplified after the trailer’s release on social media. But Hampton dismissed his critics, saying: “What’s disagreeable about social media is that the people with the loudest voices are usually the least interesting. And there is a lot of self-righteousness, which is very unattractive.”

Hampton, who won an Oscar for his screen adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, said critics failed to understand Farrell’s intentions. “The sins of the occupiers, the British, that’s what the series is about. If you concentrate on those colonial households, it’s likely the only people you’ll see from the indigenous population are servants.”

BEATS objected to the drama’s depiction of Asian women as representing “lurid temptation and subservient availability”. The book’s title is a reference to a technique used by prostitutes in Singapore. Hampton said the sex trade was part of colonalism as “you went in, you took charge and you treated people like objects”. He said the script had featured naked Chinese women, but the authorities in Malaysia, where it was filmed, “wouldn’t allow anything like that”.

In an open letter, BEATS said most of the Asian characters were extras who were reduced to “heavily accented ciphers, silent chauffeurs, exotic dancers, giggly prostitutes, monosyllabic grunts and half-naked yogis”.

Luke Treadaway, one of the film’s younger stars, said the drama illustrated the British Empire’s exploitation of the Far East. He said: “We’re showing those characters for what they were, monsters and racists, and we’re not trying to sugarcoat anything.”