Rwanda, la couleur du sang

I really enjoyed the show but had to laugh at the doctor's line in the first episode about white people finding it hard to tell African's faces apart. I laughed because Micheala Coel, whilst a great actress, has a face that is just so obviously from West African heritage and not Tutsi. Having lived and worked with Rwandans of many backgrounds over the years and knowing that people were killed in the genocide just because of how they looked it is hard to put this on one side.

This series, frankly, left me changed in ways I don't fully understand yet - changed, I think, about human condition. John Goodman was as solid as John Goodman can get, but it is Michaela Coel's (Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson's) performance that is riveting! You are never shown the scenes of the genocide directly. They are creatively gentled in animation that tells the story without showing the story, and in aftermaths that drive home reality without a bloody middle. I was grateful for that. I love a good mystery and this has many!... And, I appreciate a deeper understanding of a history that seemed incomprehensible and far away at the time. Finally, I appreciated the complex view into the way in which White, Third World nations continue to profit from the mess we had a hand in both creating and in trying to repair. If you have a stomach for hope and despair, it doesn't get better than this.

I've never seen so many people vomit. Everybody vomits at one point or another in this show, for different reasons, constantly. Seriously, like, maybe 5 or 6 times. So, beware if you have hemetophobia.

A bit violent and slow, as only british shows can be, but interesting and intriguing. The main character does get on one's nerves, but the acting is good. And certain scenes (mostly the non-dialogue ones) drag on for far too long.

An intelligent script digs below the superficial understanding that some of us (including me) have of the dreadful events in Rwanda, while creating strong characters to drive forward a human story. The actors are more than up to the task of making this balance work. I am gripped and eagerly await episode 3.

I can't remember seeing a more honest tv show about a contemporary African problem (rogue warlords) and the way white people in the west make a very good living taking 10 to 20 years 'bringing them to justice' and pulling political and economic strings to get those cushy jobs ...

The beautiful lead character plays a Rwandan that barely escaped the genocide. She is reared in the UK by a liberal white adoptive mother who is also a criminal prosecutor for the ICC in the Hague. Her daughter is totally against prosecuting the only 'hero' in the war and it is creating conflict in the family with discourse and dialogue on both sides of the genocide issue that I personally have never heard in public before. They leave no stone unturned in this show, also giving an overview of worthless UN peacekeepers and the French army, still in Rwanda.

What I like/LOVE about this show though, is they don't give you the answer.

They present all sides and let you sort thru it yourself and come to your own conclusion. I hope it's not snatched off the air. It's very political and I'm very surprised it even made it on screen for one episode. I look forward to seeing the rest of the series and I hope that the BBC doesn't capitulate to the puppetmasters that control the media and pull the plug on this early.

Fingers crossed!