There’s a reason the ocean is such an easy, enduring metaphor in narrative works, all crashing waves and ebbing tides. It’s a source of resilience, renewal, and romance, sure, but its unfathomable depths also nod to concealed emotions and long-held secrets. For Eleanor Bennett, the protagonist of Charmaine Wilkerson’s best-selling debut novel Black Cake as well as this eight-episode Hulu adaptation from Marissa Jo Cerar, her “sea of life” is swirling with secrets, from the truth of her name to the parentage of her children to the murder that took her from the shores of the West Indies all the way to the coast of Southern California.
The miniseries—which premieres its first three hour-long editions on November 1, with the rest of the episodes following weekly—shows several versions of Eleanor seeking the solace of the ocean: first, as a dreamy-eyed teenager in 1960s Jamaica, then going by her birth name Covey Lyncook (Mia Isaac), who desperately takes to the Caribbean Sea to flee an arranged marriage with a much-older local gangster. And then we meet a full-grown Eleanor Bennett (Chipo Chung), who suffers a surf-related injury (that might not actually have been an accident) while grieving the loss of her beloved husband on the sunny Pacific seaboard.
It’s when Eleanor faces her own mortality following a cancer diagnosis that Black Cake gets its structure. Along with the titular dessert, a rum-soaked recipe that they’re instructed to share “when the time is right,” she leaves behind a series of seven audio recordings for her adult children, estranged siblings Byron (Ashley Thomas) and Benny (Adrienne Warren), that will not only guide them through the loss of their mother but also plunge them into the truth of her life, into mysteries untold and identities hidden. With each episode titled after a different version of our heroine—some based on names, others on roles (missus, mother, and so on)—the show fluidly moves viewers from the past to the present and back again as Covey/Eleanor recounts her tale of survival and perseverance, continuously fighting against the history of who she is and the current of who she has to become.
With equal parts grace and grit, rising star Mia Isaac (Gray Matter) does the bulk of the dramatic heavy-lifting in the character’s story. Her young Covey is bright and bold as an ambitious swimmer in Jamaica, spending sun-soaked days training with her best friend, Bunny (Lashay Anderson), and crushing on a sweet local boy, Gibbs (Ahmed Elhaj). But as Covey is forced to grow up too fast too soon, weathering devastations and disappointments that pull her from that idyllic island to the unknown British Isles, Isaac movingly dulls that youthful exuberance to portray a woman who must make herself small so as not to attract unwanted attention, whether from fellow islander immigrants in London or authorities looking into the mysterious death of her first husband.
Despite Chipo Chung’s soulful performance and narration, the elder Eleanor plot pales in comparison to young Covey’s perspective. That could just be the very nature of flashback-driven storytelling—at the detriment of dramatic suspense, we already know that ultimately things end up pretty okay for Eleanor, in that she has a spacious home, a husband she loves, and grown children to be proud of, though Byron’s on-theme career as an oceanographer offers him more stability than Benny’s groovy multimedia art.
It’s also the fact that the trials and tribulations of the siblings aren’t explored as deeply as those of their mother, with the script merely skimming the surface of heavy issues including racial and queer identity, domestic abuse, and generational trauma. Neither actor is afforded the opportunity to emerge from that shallowness, though Ashley Thomas is given a weighty monologue on workplace discrimination late in the miniseries. Best known for her Tony-winning Broadway career, Adrienne Warren can’t shake that theatricality, her for-the-back-row melodramatics sticking out sorely during more delicately written moments.
All in all, the murder mystery that derails the main character’s life isn’t actually all that mysterious. (We correctly guessed the culprit in the first episode.) But the why that set in motion Covey/Eleanor’s saga is far less compelling than the how, how her personal history—as the biracial daughter of a Caribbean mother and a Chinese father (Simon Wan), as a young woman in the sexism-laden ’60s—has directly informed not only her own future but also the course of her children’s.
There’s deliciousness to be found in the specificity of Black Cake’s story, in being submerged in its island flavors and cultural complexities. (Speaking of, the costumes and production design are beautifully crafted, smoothly transporting viewers between decades and continents.) With an ocean’s worth of possibilities, however, we just wish it plumbed deeper.
Black Cake premieres November 1 on Hulu