A DIFFERENT SUN: SERIES BIBLE

GEOFFREY "SWIFT" STRIVER is deported back to Trinidad after spending a few years in jail in the States for an as-yet unrevealed crime. Now 32, Geoffrey has not visited the island in the 20 years he's been away, and his return unfortunately coincides with the funeral of his only sibling, JANELLE, and her husband, MARCUS WHITFORD. Geoffrey is stunned to discover their deaths by freak accident, and having nowhere else to go, moves back in with his grandmother, NEN (IRIS STRIVER), who is now also caring for Janelle’s four children, LIANNE (17), WINSTON (14), and ALEXANDER and ANNA (both 8), none of whom really know him. Over the course of the series, Geoffrey has to try to reintegrate himself into a culture and country that he feels alienated from, find gainful employment, and decide whether to remain in Trinidad to look after his family, or to return to his life in the States by any means necessary.

IRIS STRIVER is the stalwart of her family and neighborhood. Born and bred in the community of Laventille in the 1950s, she raised her kids there, and has watched it decline from a thriving middle-class neighborhood into a dangerous ghetto, rife with crime and lacking in opportunities. Forced to bring her sheltered, privileged grandchildren into the rough community, she ponders leaving, but is too afraid because she’s never lived anywhere else. Disappointed and embarrassed by the man Geoffrey has become, she initially wants him to leave. But when she discovers during the series that she has a terminal illness and that the children would be split up among their various godparents upon her death, she tries to convince Geoffrey to remain and become their legal guardian so as to keep the family intact.

LIANNE is a steelpan prodigy, playing with one of the most famous steel orchestras in the world, and has her sights set on a full scholarship to a foreign arts academy where she will study music. She’s also a concerned big sister, who’s very worried about the effect that her parents’ deaths are having on her siblings, especially Winston. Over the course of the series, she struggles with schoolwork, the realities of leaving to pursue her music career or remaining in her assumed role as substitute mother to her brothers and sister, and her own hormones and confusion about becoming a woman within the conflicting messages of a highly sexual yet sexually conservative society.

WINSTON suffers from low-level depression and finds it difficult to make friends. On top of that, he occasionally gets bullied in school. He idolized his outgoing and athletic father, but was secretly envious of him. Cut adrift from the strongest male influence in his life, and not finding anything to admire in his emotionally distant uncle, he starts turning to the Laventille street gangs for role models. When the neighborhood gang leader, GENGHIS, realizes that the boy is naïve, but intelligent, he tries to rope Winston into being in his crew. When Geoffrey discovers this, he confronts Genghis who makes him an offer – come work as his accountant, and he will not only leave Winston alone, but help Geoffrey get back into the States. Resentful at being a pawn in someone else’s game, Winston toughens up, and looks to be in danger of becoming a real gangster over the course of the show.

The twins, ALEX and ANNA, are inseparable, and each others’ stalwart. But their normally curious, creative, mischievous natures are repressed when they find themselves confined to their grandmother’s small house, forbidden to ride their bikes outside in the dangerous streets, and generally ignored by the adults who have more pressing concerns. When they start acting out in school, Mama takes them for grief counseling despite Geoffrey’s vocal disapproval. Struggling to find their place in the new household, the twins become something of a Greek chorus as they are suddenly privy to many aspects of the adult world.

JOHNSON “GENGHIS” LAM is the “boss” of Mama’s Laventille neighborhood, controlling the CEPEP, cocaine, and illegal small arms trades. He’s also second cousin to the city’s Mayor, and is therefore considered untouchable. He’s part Chinese, and has a tattoo across his shoulders of Genghis Khan’s famous quote, “I am the punishment of God”. His jovial good humor and wicked card skills belie a vicious nature. A long-term thinker, he plans to expand his reach into nearby communities, but realizes that he needs to have his money game tight so he can pay his foot soldiers properly, and recruit new ones to help open up the new territories. Hearing about Geoffrey’s accounting skills and jail time, he decides to make Geoffrey an offer he can’t refuse.

DOREEN RAMSARAN joins the family when Mama becomes bedridden. An excellent eldercare nurse, Doreen is also the single mother of a 15-year-old girl, SHERENE, whom Winston immediately falls for, which only increases his desire to prove himself on the streets so he can buy her nice things. Geoffrey also takes a liking to Doreen, but Doreen has a no-nonsense policy. She’s been burned before, most recently by Sherene’s father, and isn’t about to tolerate yet another man’s drama.

SHERENE RAMSARAN is Doreen’s daughter, Black-East Indian mix with immense ambitions but a weakness for trinkets and bad boys. Sherene is an academic whiz kid who aces all her classes and is determined to make something of herself, but she can’t help but wonder about the darker side of the neighbourhood in which she lives in east Trinidad. Doreen, knowing her daughter’s curiosities, keeps her on a short leash and tries to ensure that she’s only around “good” people, but teenagers have a way of slipping the knot…

TANISHA HOLTON, 7, is Geoffrey’s estranged daughter living in New Jersey with her mother, Rhonda. Rhonda and Geoffrey have a dysfunctional relationship owing to many years of mistrust, and Rhonda has managed to keep Tanisha away from him since the girl was little. This has made Geoffrey very resentful and distant to children, an attitude he finds he must adjust when he comes to live with his sister’s kids. Geoffrey has been too embarrassed to tell his mother about his child, so when Tanisha contacts him without Rhonda’s knowledge, it spurs him to consider Genghis’ offer to help him get back into the States.

AUSTIN “ZOOT” PHELPS, 38, is a local vagrant whom Mama Striver sometimes feeds because he was also in Geoffrey’s high school class. He’s a former artist who acquired a serious crack habit while attending UWI in the 90s. Now clean after spending several years in jail, he’s still unable to pick up the pieces of his life because the coke has pretty much destroyed most of his faculties. He spends his time scrounging around for money, food, and discarded items to make what little art he can for sale, and is often the butt of jokes and abuse for Genghis and his crew. His nickname derives from a brilliant zoot suit he made and wore for a Carnival “Saga Boy” band before succumbing to addiction. He still wears a long, dangling, double-strand Zoot chain that’s the only survivor from the suit days.

ROY “PROPHET” INCE, mid-50s, is a taxi driver and well-known social worker battling government and societal malaise to try to stop the gang wars and bring economic and social opportunities to depressed, crime-ridden areas. He’s connected, but not to real money or power, so constantly struggles to provide to the neighbourhood youth the opportunities that he knows will help break the cycle of poverty and violence. He doesn’t live in town anymore, but has lost family to the violence there, and is therefore intimate with it.

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With Mama on her deathbed, Genghis breathing down his neck, and a family that seems to get more dysfunctional every passing day, Geoffrey struggles to keep his head above water. In the series finale he is forced to confront Genghis, and must use all his skills to get the deadly man out of his life permanently, but without setting himself up for another jail sentence, or worse…