We rate Sebastian Thiel’s feel for comedy that moves between private fantasy and awkward everyday life. Dreaming Whilst Black is our strongest reason to follow him, though its warmth owes plenty to the cast as well as the direction.
Fi1m perspective
In Dreaming Whilst Black (2021), Kwabena can escape into a daydream, but he still has to come back to money, work and other people. The switches tell us how he thinks without leaving the workplace comedy stranded while we look inside his head. We warmed to him because his fantasies never make his everyday frustrations seem beneath the programme’s attention. That is what we value in Thiel’s contribution to this shared directing work: the jokes can become surreal without losing sight of what bothers the person having them.
Thiel directed the pilot as well as episodes of the series. Joelle Mae David, Koby Adom and Jermain Julien also direct the programme, and we should not mistake a shared achievement for a signature belonging to him alone. Adjani Salmon’s warmth is central to its appeal, while the romance gives us reasons to care beyond recognising another film-industry slight. Some of those targets are familiar, but the changes of pace and the performances keep the comedy from depending entirely on them.
With Just a Couple (2017), which he created, wrote and directed, Thiel had already taken his own YouTube project to television. His subsequent directing credits include Riches (2022) and episodes of Supacell (2024), the superhero drama created by Rapman. The assignments have broadened, while stories centred on black British experiences remain a recurring concern. We are interested in how he carries that attention to people across different kinds of programme; a longer list of credits is not, by itself, a reason to recommend a director.
The caution is that a clever interruption cannot make a familiar observation new. When Dreaming Whilst Black returns to the recognisable business of thwarted ambition, it needs the cast and the romance as much as the fantasy sequences. We would follow Thiel towards more comedy that gives its characters room to be likeable, fallible and concerned about paying their way. Start with Dreaming Whilst Black, especially if the romance interests you as much as the industry jokes.
Biography
Sebastian Thiel is a Zambian-British director, writer and producer. Born in Luanshya, Zambia, he was raised in north-west London and founded Upshot Entertainment at the age of 17 to create content fronted by Black talent.
Thiel began with short films and YouTube sketches before directing, writing and editing the BBC Three comedy Just a Couple (2017), which originated as a web series. He directed the pilot and episodes of the BBC Three comedy Dreaming Whilst Black (2021–2025) and has directed episodes of Riches (2022) and Supacell (2024).
