BBC starts Uprising with Steve McQueen UK pubcaster BBC1 has ordered a factual series examining three significant events involving black British people in 1981, with Small Axe and 12 Years a Slave filmmaker Steve McQueen directing. Steve McQueen (photo: Melony McGant) Uprising (3×60’) series examines the New Cross Fire in January 1981, which killed 13 black teenagers; the Black People’s Day of Action in March, when more than 20,000 people joined the first organised mass protest by black British people; and the Brixton riots in April. With James Rogan (Stephen: The Murder that Changed a Nation) also directing, Uprising will reveal how these three events intertwined and how, in the process, race relations were defined for a generation.