HBO Confirms November Release Date for Channel 4's 'Get Millie Black'

In the waning days of AT&T’s ownership of Warner Media, as behind the scenes, the company was prepping to merge with Discovery Communications, HBO went into “greenlight everything” mode. Those who were intimately familiar with Discovery’s head, David Zaslav, already knew what the rest of us had learned: This was a man who would cancel anything and everything that smacked of “woke,” and the chances of getting the sort of groundbreaking fare HBO was known for was going to become more challenging. Among the slew of series that landed deals, Get Millie Black, an adaption of Marion James’ series of novels, looked like it would never survive the transition.

However, perhaps due to partner Channel 4 not letting HBO out of it, HBO president Casey Bloys keeping himself between the project and Zas, or casting an attractive white man who happened to be a Game of Thrones alum (or maybe a combination of the above), but the series managed to make it to air, despite delays pushing it from 2022 to 2023 and now 2024. Starring Tamara Lawrance (Time) as the titular detective, ex-Scotland Yard Detective Millie-Jean Black, who recently transferred to Jamaica to help Kingston law enforcement solve a missing persons case.

Born in the U.K., Lawrance is the daughter of two Jamaican immigrants, and the series was a bit of a homecoming for her, calling it “the most difficult job I’ve done” but “an amazing experience. I was able to meet this place that I had romanticized so much in my head and always loved to go to. And I wanted to understand more about myself – and where I came from. I was so enamored by Jamaica and the people and learned a lot…it deepens my desire to connect more with my ancestry.” She also praised the series as full of “new people and new energy, and I think it shows Jamaica probably in ways that it hasn’t been seen on international television before.”