Little Bird: this beautiful, moving Canadian drama will fill you with visceral anger

Here’s one you’ll like: a man comes home to find his wife handcuffed to the wall and his young children missing. They have been taken by child protection services due to the lack of a fridge in the house, which is treated as a sign of neglect. When he confronts law enforcement officials outside, they beat him to death. Decades later, one of the children, now adopted into a Jewish home in Montreal, goes looking for the family she lost, risking the collapse of her new life to do so. I never said it was a joke. Although it turns out there was a fridge, behind the house.

Watching Little Bird (18 August, 9pm, Sky Atlantic), I was reminded that TV is capable of more than mere entertainment, something we lose sight of when we think of it as a purely profit-or loss-making enterprise. I felt the visceral anger and sadness of this story of a First Nations woman caught between cultures, robbed by forces beyond her control and stonewalled by the authorities. Set in Canada, the attitude, if not the events, feel shamefully familiar.

Although fiction, the story is real. Canada’s colonial history includes the Sixties Scoop – the mass abduction of First Nations children, forcibly taken by welfare services and rehomed with white families. Their adoption papers were sealed, effectively giving them no contact with parents or clue as to their heritage. Little Bird’s six episodes examine the long shadow of this cultural genocide through one family. At the end of each episode we are reminded that there are more Indigenous children in the care system than ever before.

Our self-elected detective is Esther Rosenblum, now in her 20s. Her only clue is a clipping of the newspaper advertisement placing her up for adoption. This is how she knows her real name: Bezhig Little Bird. Bezhig is Ojibwe for one – a fact with a cruel flipside, revealed later in her search. As for Little Bird, it’s a name that could signify rootlessness, fragility or the possibility of transcendence.

Esther/Little Bird is punishingly self-reliant, being barely accepted by her Jewish in-laws, despite converting at a young age. She tracks down family living on reserves, who are surrounded by poverty but have each other. She is isolated by her relative privilege. Another family member abducted at the same time was taken in by a family who needed an indentured servant, and made to sleep in an outhouse.

The show brilliantly dissects racism, from the sweeping and systemic to the petty and everyday. The Ojibwe men know any emotionalism or frustration with authority will be interpreted as aggression and brutally punished. Little Bird, a trained lawyer, is repeatedly told to calm down, act with decorum, while officials fob her off, oozing contempt. Any person of colour will wince with recognition when a case worker remarks: “You look so put together,” or her fiance’s mother tells her: “You’re one of the good ones.” (Unless they aren’t put together or one of the good ones, I suppose.)

The show is, ironically, at its best when restrained, training a cool eye on the banality of injustice. We are not given access to the architects of brutal welfare policy but we do meet the staff who enact it. “You’re not going to be able to do this job if you can’t get past being nice,” an experienced child protection services officer tells Adele Halpern, a greenhorn struggling to suppress her own humanity. Adele’s attempt to be more of a bureaucratic bastard is heartbreaking – and hopefully temporary. I’ve not seen all the episodes yet, but there’s a chance she may be one of the good ones.

Barrel of laughs? No. But Little Bird has dignity, tenderness and beauty. Filmed on location at Treaty 1 Territory in Manitoba, Esther’s suppressed memories of her stolen life are shot through with lushness as they return, though they aren’t all happy. The Indigenous Cree-Saulteaux actor Darla Contois gives a graceful, very moving performance as Little Bird, and the show cleaned up at the Canadian Screen Awards, winning 13 trophies. It would be easy for it to be lost in a crowded marketplace amid flashier, more commercial offerings. That would be further injustice. Watching it, you’ll be angry. And that’s OK.