Jimmy Akingbola: Handle with Care, review: a tough but tender insight to life in the system
Jimmy Akingbola: Handle with Care (ITV) was a story with love at its centre, beautifully told, although at times it was tough to watch. Akingbola, the actor recently seen in ITV’s Kate & Koji and the remake of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, was placed in a children’s home as a toddler. His father had disowned him, believing he was another man’s child; his mother, who suffered from schizophrenia, abandoned him in a social-security office.
It was an awful start in life. But then a family, the Crows, visited the home and chose him as their foster child. He remained with them until he was 16, and still refers to Gloria Crow as “Mum”.
The Crows are white but Gloria didn’t think twice about taking Akingbola into their family. “I just fell in love with him. A kid’s a kid. Doesn’t matter what colour they are,” said Gloria. She insisted that she did nothing special: “I just looked after a little boy, didn’t I? And he’s still my little boy.” But it still pained her to remember the little black girl who was also in the children’s home that day, so desperate to be fostered that she asked: “What about if I take my skin off?”
This was not a neat story in which Akingbola said there were no problems in being a black child raised by a white family. He would pretend he had other plans when the family made holiday trips to Hastings or Devon, because he hated being stared at. His brothers said they were mocked at school for having a black brother, but that swiftly ended when they got the public seal of approval from Cass Pennant, then a notorious football hooligan who had also been fostered by a white family after his early years in a Barnardo’s home.
Akingbola is also close to the siblings from his birth family, and they too spoke with honesty - they had endured a difficult upbringing with their father, and envied Akingbola for his life with the Crows. We heard from other people who had come through the care system and succeeded in life: Lennie James, a fellow actor, and Kriss Akabusi, the former Olympic athlete. It was a thoughtful film, and one which should make us look with compassion at the half a million children currently in the care system.
