--- title: "Small Island" year: 2009 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/small-island" fi1m_id: "small-island" imdb_id: "tt1315058" tmdb_id: 46367 wikidata_id: "Q7542813" fi1m_score: 72 critics_reviews: 2 published: "2026-10-07T15:14:20.297527+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T15:14:34.041460+00:00" region: "NO" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Small Island (2009) Created by John Alexander · 1h 30m · Drama ## Identity Small Island - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/small-island - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** small-island - **IMDb ID:** tt1315058 - **TMDB ID:** 46367 - **Wikidata ID:** Q7542813 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315058/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/46367, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7542813 **Fi1m score: 72** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Naomie Harris crosses an ocean in her best gloves and the Mother Country offers her a bedsit > Andrea Levy’s novel arrives on television with its warmth intact and its structure squeezed. Naomie Harris and Ruth Wilson carry the two halves of it, and a narrator keeps telling us what their faces have already said. ## Synopsis Jamaica and London, before and after the Second World War. Hortense (Naomie Harris), a schoolteacher raised to think of England as the Mother Country, loves her cousin Michael (Ashley Walters), who leaves to fly for the RAF. Gilbert (David Oyelowo), another Jamaican airman, is posted to Lincolnshire and finds the country he came to defend has no room for him. In Earls Court, Queenie (Ruth Wilson) lets rooms to lodgers while her husband Bernard (Benedict Cumberbatch) is away at the war and shows no sign of coming back. When peace comes, Hortense marries Gilbert for the passage to England, follows him across the Atlantic in 1948 and knocks on Queenie’s door in her best gloves, expecting a house. What she finds is one cold room up the stairs. ## Review Andrea Levy’s novel told its story in four voices across two islands, and gave each of them room. John Alexander’s adaptation, written by Paula Milne and Sarah Williams, has two ninety-minute episodes to do the same and spends them well. It is warm, it is properly cast, and it is about a thing British television had not often looked straight at: what the people who answered the call to the Mother Country found when they got here. It is also a series that does not trust us to notice any of this unaided, and that is the one fault that matters. The shape is simple enough. Hortense (Naomie Harris) wants England, Gilbert (David Oyelowo) wants to be treated as the airman he was, and Queenie (Ruth Wilson) wants anything to happen at all in a house in Earls Court where her husband Bernard (Benedict Cumberbatch) is missing and the lodgers are the only company. The war puts Gilbert and Queenie under the same roof; 1948 puts Hortense there too, with a suitcase and a set of expectations that nobody has thought to correct. Harris is the reason to watch. She plays Hortense with a straight back and a set of vowels learned from a book, and she lets us see how much work it costs to hold both in place. The scene at the top of Queenie’s stairs, where Hortense looks at one room with a gas ring and understands that this is the whole of what she was promised, moved us more than we expected. The reason is plain: Harris does not cry, does not raise her voice, and simply puts her gloves down on the bed, and that is worse. Wilson is her equal in the other key, generous and bored and too quick to say yes, and the two women circling each other in a kitchen are the best scenes in the series. Oyelowo gives Gilbert a lightness that keeps getting knocked out of him, and he is funny about it, which the part needs. Ashley Walters makes Michael a man you would follow out of a door without asking where. Cumberbatch has the thin end of the script; Bernard arrives late, stiff and frightened, and the series has not left itself time to show us why, so he reads as an obstacle rather than a person. It looks handsome. Tony Miller shoots Jamaica in warm yellows and London in the colour of weak tea, and the cut between them, which Roy Sharman makes often, is the series’ quiet argument about the gap between the brochure and the place. Will Hughes-Jones gives Queenie’s house peeling paper, a shared bathroom and a front step everyone has an opinion about, and Lorna Marie Mugan dresses Hortense a size too formal for every room she walks into. Martin Phipps’s score is strings and restraint, and it mostly knows when to stop. The narration does not. Hugh Quarshie is credited as Narrator, and he is used to explain what Hortense is feeling as Harris is in the middle of showing us. It is there, we suspect, to carry what the novel’s inner voices carried, but the actors have already done that job and the voiceover arrives like a second person reading over your shoulder. We found it mildly irritating in the first episode and properly so in the second, where it starts to tell us what things mean. The second episode also takes a turn we will not describe, and the series handles it with more melodrama than the book did, though the cast keeps it standing. For a two-part adaptation of a long novel, this is near the top of what the form allows. It keeps the book’s anger and its good humour, and it keeps them in the same scenes. Watch both episodes in one sitting, because the first earns the second, and be prepared to argue with the man doing the talking. *Fi1m score 72, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Small Island worth watching?** *Small Island* is worth watching for anyone who likes a well-cast literary adaptation and can forgive a voiceover that explains too much, and we scored it 72. Naomie Harris and Ruth Wilson are the reason to stay, and the scene where Hortense first sees her one cold room in Earls Court moved us more than we expected. Watch both episodes in one sitting; the first earns the second. **How long is Small Island, and what is it rated?** *Small Island* has episodes of about 1h 30m. It is a drama series. **Where can I watch Small Island in Norway?** *Small Island* is not on any streaming or rental service in Norway at the moment. It is available in 1 other country; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **Is Small Island based on a true story or a book?** *Small Island* is adapted from Andrea Levy's novel of the same name, a work of fiction set in Jamaica and London around the Second World War and the 1948 crossing to England. The series keeps the book's warmth, anger and good humour but compresses its four narrating voices into two episodes, replacing them with a narrator we found intrusive. You do not need to have read the novel to follow it. ### Reviews we read (2) - **The Guardian**, Sam Wollaston (75/100, inferred): Wollaston finds the adaptation refreshing and good, with warmth and relevance. He singles out its sumptuous look and Naomie Harris’s performance as Hortense for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2009/dec/07/being-alan-bennett-small-island-review) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (70/100, inferred): Lowry finds the production flawed but ultimately worthwhile, with its story and cast overcoming the melodrama. He especially praises the performances of Naomie Harris and Ruth Wilson, while faulting the heavy-handed narration. [Read](https://variety.com/2010/scene/markets-festivals/small-island-1117942575/) ## Details - **Created by:** John Alexander - **Director:** John Alexander - **Screenplay:** Paula Milne, Sarah Williams - **Writer:** Kathleen Cahill - **Novel:** Andrea Levy - **Cinematography:** Tony Miller - **Editor:** Roy Sharman - **Music:** Martin Phipps - **Production design:** Will Hughes-Jones - **Costume design:** Lorna Marie Mugan - **Producer:** Abi Bach, Grainne Marmion, Vicky Licorish - **Cast:** David Oyelowo as Gilbert; Ashley Walters as Michael; Benedict Cumberbatch as Bernard; Naomie Harris as Hortense; Ruth Wilson as Queenie; Shaun Parkes as Winston; Hugh Quarshie as Narrator; Roger Sloman as Mr. Todd - **Runtime:** 1h 30m - **Release (Norway):** 6 December 2009 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in Norway Not streaming, renting or buying in Norway at the last check. Also available in: GB. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Small Axe* (2020), Fi1m 88: Steve McQueen’s five films on West Indian London; the next chapter, told with more room — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/small-axe.md) - *Pressure* (1976): Horace Ové’s film about the children of Hortense’s generation, angry and unvarnished - *Flame in the Streets* (1961): A British studio trying to say something about race in 1961, and nearly managing - *Brick Lane* (2007): Another woman arrives in London by marriage and finds the flat smaller than promised - *Belle* (2013): Gugu Mbatha-Raw in an earlier England that also could not decide where to seat her --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/small-island