HOW much do you know about the prosecution of international war crimes? If the answer is "very little", you're not alone - it's a topic many of us are unfamiliar with.

Take actress Michaela Coel: Before reading the script for Black Earth Rising, a new BBC Two thriller which deals with the complicated legal ramifications of the Rwandan genocide, she had no idea about the history the show covers.

"I felt outraged, shocked at my own ignorance," admits the 30-year-old. "When did this happen? I was asking my Mum, 'Why didn't you tell me?' I wanted to correct my own ignorance and I wanted to somehow feel a sense of redemption from my lack of awareness."

Coel plays Kate Ashby, adopted from Rwanda as a child during the genocide and raised in Britain by Eve Ashby (The Crown's Harriet Walter), a world class British prosecutor in international criminal law. Now in her 20s, Kate has followed in her mother's footsteps and works as a legal investigator in the law chambers of Michael Ennis (John Goodman).

"She's absolutely incredible," Coel says of her character. "I understand that she is not real but she is my hero. Her perseverance, her resilience, her strength, her ability to defy is admirable."

The story takes a turn when Eve embarks on a case at the International Criminal Court, prosecuting an African militia leader, and Michael and Kate end up on a journey that will alter their lives forever. Discussing her preparation for the role, Coel reveals she read various accounts of genocide survivors. "I found the more I read, the more tangled everything became," she explains.

The drama's creator, Bafta-winner Hugo Blick, understandably did a lot of research. "In order to feel authentic and knowledgeable about these things, it took about six months of research through Rwanda and into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a number of people whose experiences are, in some ways, shown to influence the story," says the 53-year-old writer. "But they're not personifications."

After completing political spy thriller The Honourable Woman, about a baroness trying to forge new ties between Israelis and Palestinians, Blick recognised he was interested in the reconciliation of trauma.

"So I thought, 'How does that work institutionally?' Looking at war crimes, that's a pretty big traumatic event and how are we helping to reconcile people to that? And why are we doing it as a Western environment? Should we be doing it? Why are we doing it?"

Blick calls the unfamiliarity of the story both "the strength of the show and the hill it has to climb".

"Our knowledge of modern Africa reminds you that during the genocide it was a period when OJ Simpson was arrested," he notes. "What do we remember? We remember OJ Simpson's arrest, the tragic death of two people, but in fact, at the same time, up to a million people were killed in Rwanda.

"We talk about how the West sometimes expresses this opinion - which is horrifically dangerous - that 'down there, that's just what they do to each other, isn't it?' That total lack of engagement, responsibility and recognition, and when we make those kind of comments is something we look to explore within the story."

Blick hopes that, after watching the series, people will have a better understanding of "our relationship between our institutions, justice and Africa". But he also says it's a two-way street. "It doesn't mean that we cannot be critical of African environments," he points out. "This is a story that is built to be a compulsive thriller, and it's asking some difficult questions."

Coel's parents were born in Ghana, where filming of Black Earth Rising took place. "It was my first time going home and it was absolutely overwhelming," recalls the actress. Does she see similarities between her and her character? "Definitely," she says. "It's my character's first time going back to Rwanda, it was my first time going back to Ghana, which is horrifically weird. Scary parallels. Being brought up in the West, I was born here and her only memories begin here."

As for whether she thinks more people will investigate Rwanda's history thanks to the show, she says: "I believe in curiosity. I believe it is something that I was denied growing up, going to a pretty s*** school. I would love for everybody to have the desire to be curious beyond comfort."

  • Black Earth Rising starts on BBC Two on Monday