BLACK ACTORS, WHITE CITY

With the dream of making a series like Bad Boys for a British audience, Noel Clarke and Ashley Walters created Bulletproof, a buddy cop action drama that sees detectives Bishop and Pike fight crime together on the streets of London’s East End.

Though at first executives were hesitant to pick up a show staring two black leads, the first season was a runaway success in the UK and went on to pull good ratings in the US.

“It’s ground-breaking because we haven’t really had a show in Britain with two black male leads who are positively represented,” Clarke told IndieWire at the time. “The bigger shows here that feature black men are always in stereotypical roles, like drug dealers or gang members, or just generally engaged in criminal activity. In our show, they are black male role