Ony Uhiara

In The State (2017), Ony Uhiara has to convey Shakira Boothe’s feelings with much of her face covered. She gives us enough through her eyes to keep watching a character whom the writing has not fully explained. The performance holds our attention even as the story becomes predictable. We found ourselves caring about Shakira when we were losing patience with the series, because Uhiara made her disillusionment convincing. It is a strong performance in a drama we cannot recommend without substantial reservations.

Uhiara’s screen work moved from a regular role as Adele Crouch in the sitcom The Crouches (2003–2005) to supporting parts in Venus and Sixty Six (both 2006). The lead in Peter Kosminsky’s The State gave her greater responsibility for holding a drama together. Film appearances in Jawbone (2017) and Simon Bird’s Days of the Bagnold Summer (2019) remained supporting parts. We would not take the size of those film roles as a measure of what she can carry.

Uhiara researched Shakira through testimonies and learned Arabic phonetically for the role. Alongside the restricted visibility of her face, that gave her several practical difficulties to solve before an audience could begin to care about the character. The work does not solve the series’ central problem: its people are too often asked to explain its subject before we know enough about them. Kosminsky gives her a demanding part, but the writing leaves too much of the motivation unexplained for the character to be fully persuasive.

Quiet determination suits Uhiara, though it cannot compensate indefinitely for missing detail in a script. She is often cast as people whose choices are constrained, and Shakira makes us want more time with the individual making those choices. We would welcome another substantial screen role that lets her character be particular before asking her to represent anything. If its subject already interests you, The State is worth trying for Uhiara; expect to be frustrated by the writing.