PBS’ ‘Ridley Road’ holds lessons to America from ’60s London

By MARK KENNEDY
AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — It took eight long years for Sarah Solemani to get a murky part of Britain’s post-World War II history from the pages of a book to our TV screens. She had been impressed by Jo Bloom’s 2014 novel “Ridley Road” about a Jewish-led underground anti-fascist resistance movement in London in the 1960s. But making it into a series was hard-going. Then two things happened: Brexit in England and Donald Trump in the United States. Suddenly, nativist lurches in democracies weren’t so niche. “Ridley Road” — a multicultural thoroughfare in London — centers on an unconventional heroine, a young Jewish hairdresser who goes undercover into the neo-Nazi movement. The series makes its U.S. debut May 1 on PBS’ “Masterpiece.”