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In April 1833, at the height of the anti-slavery debate, a young African-American named Ira Aldridge took to the stage of the Covent Garden theatre in London as the star of the latest production of Shakespeare's Othello. Two days later, the production closed, ostensibly as the result of illness, but amid howling reviews that decried, in deeply racist language, the elevation of a black actor to the role of Shakespeare's tragic hero. Yet Aldridge was a superstar, feted across Europe who settled in Britain and married a British woman.

In this first of two programmes, Lenny Henry traces the long and painful road that black British performers, playwrights and film-makers have travelled, from the overt racial discrimination of the 19th century, via the thinly veiled slurs that persisted through the first 70 years of the 20th, to today's more equal society. This week, Lenny talks to playwrights Mustapha Matura, Roy Williams, Lolita Chakrabarti and Kwame Kwei-Armah and actors and directors Carmen Munroe, Yvonne Brewster and Paulette Randall. As well as Aldridge's Othello, he hears how racial issues were reflected on TV from the Black and White Minstrel Show to Love Thy Neighbour and Desmond's, and in films like Horace Ov茅's Pressure.

Consultant: Dr Michael Pearce
Producer: Simon Elmes.