History Literature / WhiteTeeth

* ButNotTooBlack: In-universe- Irie (who is mixed-race) is hugely hung up about her Jamaican hair and typically curvaceous figure, wishing she could have sleek hair and a willowy body like she perceives all the Caucasian girls at school do.

* HotForTeacher: [[spoiler: Samad]], though not a student (and considerably older), has an affair with a teacher after he gives up [[ADateWithRosiePalms pining for her]].

* ADateWithRosiePalms: this is cause for [[SeriousBusiness serious]] angst for the semi-devout Muslim Samad Iqbal, since it is [[AgainstMyReligion against his religion]], but he uses a [[ExactWords loophole]] to justify his transgression: the actual instruction from the imam to mind his 'right hand', seemingly forgetting that Samad's right hand is mostly paralysed. So he uses his left.

* NothingButHits
* PlayingGertrude: Because of a combination of DawsonCasting and [[TimeSkip Time Skips]], by Part Three Archie Panjabi is playing the mother of a character whose actor is only three years her junior.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Enough to populate the entire city of London, it seems.

* AdaptedOut: Thanks to the novel having LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, a huge number are cut from the TV adaptation including everyone connected to O’Connell’s, Josh’s three younger brothers, and everybody from Archie and Samad’s World War Two flashback other than Dr Sick/the Devil Of Dachau.

%%* SchoolStudyMedia

* AdaptationalBadass: In the novel, KEVIN’s leader Brother Ibrahim is mentioned as being 5’7’’ and a deeply unimpressive public speaker thanks to his odd intonations and constant use of DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment. In the TV adaptation, he is a much more imposing leader played by 6’1’’ Creator/ChuOmambala

''White Teeth'', a 2000 novel by Zadie Smith, chronicles the lives of two UsefulNotes/WorldWarII veterans and their families in late twentieth-century London. Samad Iqbal is an intelligent and voluble but underemployed waiter, and Archie Jones is a laconic and indecisive everyman, but they are drawn together by their shared experiences in the war, similar family situations, and mutual need for a balancing influence.

When Samad's son Millat, Archie's daughter Irie, and their classmate Joshua Chalfen are accused of using drugs on school property, Joshua's intellectual parents decide to be an [[SarcasmMode uplifting influence]] on the poor working class children. [[MrsRobinson Joyce Chalfen]] aspires to become a mother figure to the TroubledButCute Millat, while Marcus Chalfen decides that Irie Jones and Millat's more studious twin Magid can be of assistance in a controversial experiment he is conducting.

* ActionGirl: Alsana Iqbal can whip her husband in hand-to-hand combat (okay, so she [[CombatPragmatist sometimes cheats]]) and is a MamaBear to boot.
** Amusingly, she always looks in public like the stereotype of the oppressed South Asian wife (and likes to lecture her relatives as if it were so.) The truth is... more complicated.

* AnimalWrongsGroup: [[spoiler: Joshua Chalfen]] is part of a radical animals rights group.

* BackForTheFinale [[spoiler: 'Dr Sick']]
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Subverted a number of times.

* TheDarkSide: a character who is a ''StarWars'' fan lampshades this trope when he hears that Irie is working for Dr. Chalfen. [[ShutUpHannibal (Irie retorts with "Fuck you, Ryan, I'm not Darth Vader.")]]
* DracoInLeatherPants: Millat, in-universe.

* EvilutionaryBiologist: In universe, several characters consider Marcus Chalfen to be this, although 'Dr. Sick' is better example.
* EyeScream[=/=]TearsOfBlood: 'Dr Sick' suffers from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemolacria haemolacria]], just to make him even more creepy (and unforgettable)
* ForScience: Marcus's position on Future Mouse.
* FunetikAksent: In spades.

* TheIndecisive: Archie

* MalcolmXerox: KEVIN.
* MayDecemberRomance: When they are both forty-eight, Archie and Samad marry nineteen year-old Clara Bowden and Alsana Begum. While the trope is played straight for Archie and Clara, Samad's marriage to Alsana was arranged sometime before 1945. When he was only eighteen and a decade before she was born.

* [[RacistGrandma Racist Grandpa]]: Mr. J. P. Hamilton, who isn't really racist but comes off that way because of his casual use of [[AntiquatedLinguistics demeaning Victorian-era terms]].

* ReallyGetsAround: Millat, UpToEleven.

* RedOniBlueOni: Millat and Magid, respectively.
* SchoolStudyMedia

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: You don't get much more straightforward than this.

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Several characters in the television version. For example, Joshua Chalfen, who is a pudgy nerd in the novel, is played by PrettyBoy Creator/JamesMcAvoy.
** The novel suggests he grows out of the dorkiness, and possibly slims down too... but having been that kid is still informing who he is...
** Also Irie; whose weight (thirteen stone), buck teeth, glasses and unmanageable afro are major factors in her poor self-image is played by Sarah Ozeke who has none of these traits other than wearing glasses in some scenes.

* AdaptationalBadass: In the novel, KEVIN’s leader Brother Ibrahim is mentioned as being 5’7’’ and a deeply unimpressive public speaker thanks to his odd intonations and constant use of DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment. In the TV adaptation, he is a much more imposing leader played by 6’1’’ Chu Omambala

** Dr Sick is a scientific genius who was part of the Nazis eugenics program but is limited by illness and spends most of his time in a secluded house in Bulgaria painting the surrounding landscape. In the TV adaptation he is a concentration camp commandant notorious enough to earn the nickname [[RedBaron “Devil Of Dachau”]].
** Unlike in the novel, Josh actually acts on his crush on Joely and hatred of Crispin [[spoiler: by pushing Crispin and several other FATE members out of the back of the group’s van after they have been pulled over by the police, and proceeding to try and carry out their plan with just himself and Joely.]]

* AdaptationalVillainy: In the novel, Alsana burns Millat’s secular belongings to teach him a lesson after she sees him on the news at a BookBurning of Literature/TheSatanicVerses. In the TV adaptation, the act is carried out by Samad in a drunken rage with no provocation by Millat.

** Dr Sick is mentioned by Samad to have been part of the Nazis’ eugenics program. The Devil Of Dachau is a concentration camp commandant monstrous enough to gain a RedBaron-style nickname.

* AdaptationExpansion: A number of events that the novel mentions in passing as having already happened are actually depicted onscreen such as Samad and Archie meeting again for the first time after the war, Samad and Alsana's wedding, and Clara recovering from the motorcycle accident where she loses most of her teeth.

* CompositeCharacter: Sir Edmund Flecker-Glenard becomes a combination of himself (a turn-of-the-century industrialist stationed in Jamaica) and Captain Charlie Durham (Irie’s maternal great-grandfather).

* DawsonCasting: Millat and Magid (both fifteen years old in Part Three and seventeen in Part Four) are played by twenty-six year old Christopher Simpson.
** Josh (who is the same age as Magid and Millat) is played by twenty-three year old Creator/JamesMcAvoy
** Clara and Alsana (both nineteen years old in Part One) are played by Naomie Harris and Archie Panjabi who were twenty-five and twenty-nine years old during filming. Though this becomes inverted as [[TimeSkip Time Skips]] mean that, by Part Three, their characters are both thirty-four.
* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler: Dr Sick's]] ultimate fate is never mentioned in the novel but in the TV adaptation, Samad mentions that he had a heart attack and is a goner.
* FawltyTowersPlot: The restaurant scene in Part Two becomes this as Samad attempts to maintain his lie that he owns the restaurant to impress Joyce and Marcus Malfen; while actually attempting to fulfil his duties as a waiter, deal with a scorned Poppy Burt-Jones, and carry out his plan to [[spoiler: secretly send Magid to Bangladesh]].

* PragmaticAdaptation: Much of the philosophising and world-building (such as the history of O'Connell's and exposition about characters' experiences outside of the main story) by the narrator are cut without being [[RecycledPremise recycled]] in some way.

* TimeSkip: More prominent than in the novels by cutting the briefly shown events of Millat, Magid, and Irie’s early teenage years and jumping from 1985 straight to 1990 when they are fifteen years old and their story begins in earnest.

* FunWithAcronyms: [[spoiler: Millat]] is part of a group of young radical second-generation British Muslims called K.E.V.I.N.: Keepers of the Eternal and Vigilant Islamic Nation. [[LampshadeHanging (They are aware they have an acronym problem.)]]

* CoincidentalBroadcast: After [[spoiler: Darcus]]’s death scene, the camera pans over to the television where an episode of {{Series/Bagpuss}} is finishing. [[RuleOfSymbolism “And Bagpuss gave a big yawn and settled down to sleep.]]