The Singapore Grip: ITV drama branded 'kick in the teeth' to UK’s East and Southeast Asian community

The forthcoming ITV adaptation of The Singapore Grip, the satirical 1978 novel by JG Farrell, has received a strong reaction even before the series airs.  

A trailer for the drama from Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher Hampton was released ahead of the UK premiere on 13 September.

Set during the Second World War, The Singapore Grip follows a British family during the Japanese occupation, and stars Luke Treadaway, David Morrissey, Charles Dance, Jane Horrocks and Elizabeth Tan.

After the trailer aired, a number of prominent arts figures shared their thoughts on the first glimpse of the show.

Researcher and screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann [Churchill, Medici] hoped the show would do the novel’s “sophisticated, merciless and stinging” satire justice.

However, Marvel actor Simu Liu simply wrote: “No… just… no.”

BEATS, a not-for-profit advocacy organisation founded by British East and Southeast Asians working in theatre and film, released a statement addressing the show.

“In a landscape where our creative industries are decimated, the Black Lives Matter movement has placed this country’s problematic view of its own colonial legacy firmly under the microscope,” a spokesperson said.

“In this context, an expensively mounted TV adaptation of JG Farrell’s satirical novel, with colonial Singapore as its exotic backdrop, is a kick in the teeth to the UK’s East and Southeast Asian community. This is especially concerning at a time when anti-East and Southeast Asian hate crime has dramatically increased during the coronavirus pandemic.”

BEATS said the adaptation could have taken a “more enlightened” perspective to reflect the progress made in the 50 years since the novel was published.

“Instead, even the cynical desperation and callous decadence of Farrell’s Caucasian characters is bled out in favour of jauntily-forced, comedic indulgence, presenting this traumatic period of Singapore’s history as little more than breezy and inconsequential,” the organisation said.

Hamptom issued a statement to Variety that said “any fair-minded viewer will easily understand that [The Singapore Grip] is an attack on colonialism — and is indeed based on the last of a trio of books known as the ‘Empire Trilogy,’ which constitute perhaps the most celebrated attack on colonialism by a British novelist in the 20th century”.

“Its very subject is possibly the greatest catastrophe to befall the British Empire during its decline, a disaster the colonists were themselves squarely responsible for,” he said.

Hampton added that he felt the “most sympathetic and resourceful” of the central characters is a Chinese woman, a member of the Resistance who “is able to educate our hero and open his eyes to what he is already becoming aware of, namely the corrupt practices and casual racism of the ruling British elite”.

BEATS responded to this by claiming that the show appears to announce every appearance by Vera Chiang with “keening erhu music” while, “despite her supposed refugee status, she models impeccable cheongsams and enigmatic smiles”.

“Asian womanhood is represented as lurid temptation and subservient availability. Studies have shown that sexualized, submissive stereotyping of East/Southeast Asian women leads to staggeringly high rates of physical and sexual violence against them,” said BEATS, referring to other Asian characters in the show.

Mingyu Lin, a stage and film director, tweeted: “[The show] does to Singapore what most Vietnam war films did to Vietnam – relegate a country who suffered through a horrific war into a backdrop for a foreign, white narrative where the only BESEA characters are portrayed as exotically sexual options or nameless aggressors.”

She added: “For those that have defended the show because the book is meant to be a takedown of colonialism - personally I don’t think culturally colonising Singapore for your tv show is a good way to do that. This basically does the modern-day equivalent of what it purports to denounce.”

The Singapore Grip debuts on ITV on 13 September.