The Long Song

BBC1, Tue, Wed, Thur, 9pm ▼ Jack plays a plantation overseer in 19th Century Jamaica. SCOTS actor Jack Lowden reckons BBC1’S The Long Song will be an eye-opener for viewers – as it certainly was for him.

It’s a three-part drama set in the chaotic final days of slavery in the British Empire, following the inhabitants of a Jamaican sugar plantation.

“I think it will be a rollercoaster for people viewing it,” says Jack, who played a fighter pilot in last year’s blockbuster movie Dunkirk.

“It will challenge a lot of people’s preconceptions.

“I think there will be welcome surprises as to how certain things are portrayed in the piece.

“That’s the great thing about it. It’s being told in a fresh way.

“It’s a subject matter that most people know about, but it’s not been told enough.

“For it to be told the way that this has been told, genuinely is fresh. It has a lot of swagger, which is great.”

Tamara Lawrance, Hayley Atwell and Sir Lenny Henry also star in the powerful drama which runs over three nights from Tuesday.

Jack plays Robert, who arrives in Jamaica after abolition and emancipation and becomes the new overseer of the plantation.

He’s conflicted by his beliefs and the need to run the plantation as a business – while also falling in love.

And Jack, who won a Scottish BAFTA Best Actor award for Highlands-set thriller Calibre this year, says he learned so much during preparation for The Long Song.

“The key thing that surprised me was that, after the abolition of slavery, compensation was paid to the plantation owners by the British Crown.

“Not a penny was given to the workers. As Robert reveals in the piece, they can’t stay in their homes unless they pay him rent – and they cannot pay rent unless they work on the plantation.

“So not a lot really changed for the slaves.”

Jack found out more from a diary he was given of a plantation owner, kept from when he left England.

“It’s quite remarkable what he wrote,” adds Jack.“the view that he had of himself as a saviour of these people is remarkable.

“The ignorance is breathtaking, yet he seems to have genuine love for the people that he essentially owns and believes that they have love for him.

“There are quite a few entries in the diary where they are offered freedom or certain things and they’d rather stay with him as, in his words,”they love him so much”.

“My character Robert turns up with an idealism that he thought was hopeful but in reality it’s really damaging.”