A comedy series in which a young Black British man working in recruitment tries to break into filmmaking while managing his domestic life and the indignities of the creative industries. Dreaming Whilst Black began as a web series in 2018, after Adjani Salmon and co-writer Ali Hughes met at the Met Film School. A television pilot aired on BBC Three in 2021 and won a BAFTA Craft Award for emerging talent in fiction in 2022, as well as the Royal Television Society's Breakthrough Award the same year.
The full series, co-produced by Big Deal Films and A24, launched on BBC Three on 24 July 2023, with a second series following in October 2025. Salmon plays Kwabena, a recruitment worker whose script, Jamaica Road, is passed to a production company by his friend and former film school colleague Amy, played by Dani Moseley. The first series tracks his attempts to find a foothold in an industry that speaks the language of diversity while practising something considerably narrower, alongside his developing relationship with Vanessa, played by Babirye Bukilwa, and the domestic rhythms of his cousin Maurice's household as Maurice's wife Funmi approaches the end of her pregnancy.
The second series gives Kwabena his first directing job on a television production called Sin and Subterfuge, where he must manage actors, crew, and executive producers simultaneously. Peter Serafinowicz and Jessica Hynes appear in the first series; Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Charles Edwards join in the second. The series received a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 17 reviews.
Michael Hogan in the Daily Telegraph praised its balance of humour and serious points about discrimination and health inequality; Dan Einav in the Financial Times noted Salmon as a natural leading man in a show that skewers the creative industries' superficial use of diversity rhetoric. The Guardian awarded the second series five stars, calling it masterly.
Production Details
United Kingdom / BBC Three - Big Deal Films, A24 / 2021-2025
Writers: Adjani Salmon, Ali Hughes
Directors: Sebastian Thiel, Koby Adom, Joelle Mae David
Main Cast
Adjani Salmon as Kwabena
Dani Moseley as Amy
Demmy Ladipo as Maurice
Rachel Adedeji as Funmi
Babirye Bukilwa as Vanessa
Martina Laird as Aunt Polly
Roger Griffiths as Uncle Claude
Jessica Hynes as Drew
Peter Serafinowicz as Howard
