When Idris Elba speaks, people listen. In January 2024, he kicked off the New Year with a protest outside Parliament. His subject of choice? Knife crime.
Shortly after, the government announced that it would be closing a loophole in the law, and forbidding the sale of machetes and zombie knives. It’s a rare triumph in this story of institutional failings – and one that Elba’s clearly held close to his heart for a long time.
Hence, this documentary, which follows the renowned actor around as he tackles the thorny subject of knife crime on our streets.
It comes laden with sobering statistics. In the last decade, knife crime has doubled. Last year, an average of four people were stabbed to death every week. Most of the perpetrators – and victims – are teens. Many of those convicted for knife carrying are white: 69 per cent, in fact.
“It's a real indication of how much we have failed young people,” he says at one point, amid stories about 16 year-old Harry Pitman, who was stabbed to death on New Year’s Eve at Primrose Hill, and Shawn Seesahai, 19, who was stabbed to death by two boys aged 12 in Wolverhampton.
Elba meets some of them here, both victims and perpetrators: in one visit to Feltham, dubbed “the most violent prison in the UK”, he speaks to a 17-year-old, who started carrying a knife years previously and tells him, “when I had a knife I felt like I could do anything, I felt like I was a god. Nobody could touch me.” As police officers and charity workers add later, it’s a cycle most fall into at a young age and feel unable to break out of – with often deadly results.
He’s a good interviewer, and a good host: quiet, thoughtful and self-aware enough to make light of his celebrity. “I’m an amplification device,” he says wryly at one point, despite a scene in which he visits a prison and is greeted by a wall of inmates chanting his name.
More importantly, his fame doesn’t get in the way of his ability to connect with his interviewees, even if it does grant him access to the corridors of power. In one particularly mind-boggling scene, the King is shown greeting Elba at the door to Buckingham Palace. Everybody, it seems, wants a bit of his stardust.
But it’s the people at the heart of the issues who cut through most effectively. We hear from a mother who lost her son to a ninja sword attack (even more heartbreakingly, his death was a result of mistaken identity); from Samir, who works for the St Giles Trust’s SOS project, aimed at taking youths off the streets; from a young man whose case worker saved him from prison and introduced him to horse riding instead.
Projects and initiatives to reduce this problem abound, but they keep running into problems: namely, money. The SOS Project, we learn, is in danger of having its funding cut off; a similar scheme in the West Midlands will run out of money in six months’ time. Despite promises from Keir Starmer and his government – who crop up here to talk about how vital the issue is – the 2024 budget announced no new funding for youth services.
Elba has solutions: one of them, to ban the sale of non-kitchen knives. Blunt the tips. Invest more in youth services and in prevention. “There is hope, there's gotta be ways that this can be done,” he says at the end. Thank goodness he’s here to fight the cause – even if our politicians don’t want to.
Streaming now on iPlayer
