The opening of this book notes the simultaneity of two events: the onset and increasing presence of television in British households and the wave of immigration from the West Indies to the United Kingdom, set off by the 1948 arrival of 492 Jamaican men on the Tilbury Docks twenty-five miles east of London, via the SS Windrush. The arrival was documented in a newsreel and subsequently shown on the nascent medium to what Newton estimates was a small audience of fewer than fifty thousand households. And while it was not, as he points out, the first appearance of people of African and Asian descent on the BBC, it set the stage for the subsequent efforts to account for, understand, and represent their growing presence in British society. Focusing on the BBC, Newton surveys over fifty years of the BBC's attempts, both onscreen and in countless meetings and correspondence, to understand its role with regard to immigration not only from the West Indies but also from South Asia and Africa.

The book tracks a variety of debates rooted in recurring controversies, arguing that the controversies within which migration was framed held remarkably steady for that period. Was the medium's role one of education and social engineering, with emphasis on representing the success and normalcy of new immigrants and their abilities to assimilate to British society? Or were depictions of crime and the marginalization of nonwhite Britons legitimate as a way to open discussions of ongoing failures to deal successfully with recently arrived people and to be more realistic? In addition, the institution struggled with locating their audience: were they to target what they had designated as mainstream audiences with the intention of advocating for the newcomers among them? Or ought they direct their programming to the migrants themselves, explaining their new surroundings to them and thus assisting their integration to British society? And finally, what was the BBC's responsibility for inclusion of people of African and Asian descent within it own ranks, as performers, writers, directors, or executives? Newton traces the ways in which these deliberations played out, with careful attention to the variety of personalities and perspectives.

Because the BBC radio had from the 1930s created programs about and for people from the West Indies, Newton rightly precedes his survey of television with a discussion of the involvement of people like Jamaican radio producer and journalist Una Marson and her role in the creation of a number of programs and broadcasts. As British society navigated the postwar landscapes of the Cold War that featured tense race relations, including a number of race riots, the social ferment of the 1970s, and Thatcherism, so, Newton argues, did the BBC. At times didactic, at other times critical, and always struggling to find a balance among the various dangers of underrepresentation, misrepresentation, or misunderstanding, programming ranged from variety shows to documentaries on the color bar to the increasingly popular “dramedy.” Throughout, the BBC held conferences, consulted community leaders, received complaints from all sides, faced competition from US television markets, and continued to revise its strategies. If, as Newton notes, other authors have tackled the story of black participation in British television, this book contributes an insider's view and, importantly, attends to the multiple roles of West Indians, Africans, and South Asians in decisions about programming and representation.

Inevitably, an ambitious work will leave unanswered questions and create some missed opportunities. While the author incorporates reader surveys into his analysis, he leaves aside the thorniest questions about reception. Admittedly, getting at the subtleties of the ways audiences took in the variety of messages propagated may not ever be possible, but a further exploration of the mutual constitution of what Raymond Williams might have called “structures of feeling” (The Long Revolution, 1961) among both media and the public with regard to race and racism might have added another analytical layer to the book. Along the same lines, the book implicitly traces a fascinating process by which migrants from many different places all came to be identified as “Black.” The analysis takes this process into account but does not probe in any depth the ways that the BBC itself, as well as migrants' self-identification practices or white Britons' clumsy racialization and misunderstanding of particular forms of diversity, might have contributed to this. Finally, the book also opens paths of inquiry with regard to transnationalism. Recent work in media studies has noted the importance of transnational flows of personnel, practices, and idioms in the realization of national media. The influence of US television and the circulation of images and tropes throughout the British Empire receive some attention, but they merit a more extensive discussion, if not in this already rich and vastly informative volume, then perhaps in future research.