‘Get Millie Black’ Review: HBO’s Jamaica-Set Crime Drama Puts a Sharp, Vivid Spin on Familiar Tropes

A disappeared girl. A detective who seeks out the missing because of things she can’t place from her traumatic past. An awkward new partnership; stern and disapproving authority figures; a twist that proves that what had seemed like an isolated case is actually part of something larger.

HBO’s Get Millie Black is a vivid, pulsating reminder of how forcefully the cobwebs can be swept from even the stodgiest of plots if you find a location viewers haven’t tired of, introduce characters who rise organically from that environment and honor those elements as thoroughly as you do the inevitably rising body count and the unfolding conspiracy.

The five-part series marks a smooth transition to the small screen for Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings) and a breakout starring vehicle for Tamara Lawrance. It quickly takes its place in that always-welcome category of off-the-beaten-path mysteries (see also AMC’s Dark Winds and HBO’s True Detective: Night Country and The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) that prove that I’m not tired of the genre, I’m just tired of broadcast procedurals that keep the genre landlocked in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

Lawrance plays Millie-Jean Black, raised in Jamaica but shipped as an adolescent to London, where she eventually becomes a Scotland Yard detective. She’s always experienced guilt at leaving her gender non-conforming brother behind with her abusive mom, especially after being told that Orville has died. When her mother dies and omething bad happens at her job, Millie retreats to her home country, takes a new police gig in Kingston and discovers that Orville is now Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), turning tricks and living in the queer transient community known as the Gully.

Some time later, Millie has settled into a comfortable professional rhythm with partner, Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr), but an uncomfortable life rhythm, trying to rebuild her relationship with the unapologetic but troubled Hibiscus. Haunted by the city and the life she used to know, Millie relies on her work to set things right. When a nurse comes into the precinct reporting that a promising teenage girl (Shernet Swearine’s Janet) hasn’t been seen in two weeks, the case takes Millie all over the city, from trashy go-go bars to the homes of the very white, very condescending local elite. The search for elusive justice is further complicated when an investigator (Joe Dempsie’s Luke) arrives from London seeking the same man who has become Millie’s top suspect.

James, who was born and raised in Kingston by a detective mother, is invested in getting this milieu right, down to the sense of what it means to try to enforce the law in a land where the laws were designed to repress a colonized people. The drama is most potent when it’s exploring what it’s like for your entire identity to be criminalized, as seen in Hibiscus’ efforts toward self-actualization within a culture that forces her to literally live in a gutter, or the relationship between Curtis and his husband in a country where same-sex intimacy faces social and potentially legal sanctions.

The creator’s literary pedigree is evident in guiding Get Millie Black. Each episode is narrated by a different main character, and the voiceovers are florid and metaphor-driven — so much talk of ghosts, so few actual ghosts. But it’s also tethered to the concrete by a central case that’s gritty, violent and, if I’m honest, a bit perfunctory by the last of the four episodes sent to critics.

If the twists are too easily visible and the revelations a hair too formulaic, however, James still treats the genre and its conventions with respect. The dialogue has an effective crackle, blending theatrical repartee and low-key Jamaican patois with the writer’s poetic impulses in a way that makes every character seem distinctive, even if they only get a few lines. That so many of the actors in this well-cast piece will be unknown to most viewers — Dempsie, aka Gendry from Game of Thrones, may be the biggest name, and his character is fittingly treated as an outlier — adds to the immersion.

McQueen, in her first screen credit, plays Hibiscus with a defiance that prevents her from ever feeling like a victim or stereotype. She finds notes of humor and rage alongside her character’s internalized pain. The series also marks a compelling early role for Swearine, whose Janet starts out symbolically important but becomes increasingly crucial to the story. Lawrance, one of the leads in the “Education” chapter of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, is tremendously confident as the still center to the unfurling wildness of the story. Her Millie is imperfect, damaged and human, not to mention quite adroit at code switching with her accent and vernacular.

Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, who worked with Lawrance on Small Axe, shoots Get Millie Black alongside Kanamé Onoyama. In collaboration with directors led by Tanya Hamilton, they approach the terrain from a pointedly non-touristic perspective, favoring neighborhoods and lived-in interiors to beaches and resorts. Even with James’ tendency toward talkiness, the series moves at a rapid clip — each episode is under 47 minutes — and Carly Paradis’ score delivers a steady heartbeat throughout.

HBO is calling this a limited series, but I hope that the unseen Get Millie Black finale doesn’t close too many doors. I’m not necessarily interested in the next case on Millie Black’s docket, but I’m sure that she and Hibiscus have more ghosts to exorcise, and five episodes in this world feels like only a beginning.