TV Review: This is England '86

One of the things that made the film This is England seem so sad was that – at the risk of sounding like someone’s mother – they were such a nice group of kids until that racist one came along. Before I saw it, all I knew was that it was about a boy falling in with a gang of skinheads. So I sort of assumed they’d all be a bad influence on him. Instead, Woody, Lol and the others take Shaun under their collective wing and, despite being older and something of a group of troublemakers, offer him genuine friendship. They are such an appealing, if flawed, set of characters that it’s all the more upsetting when events start to take a darker turn.

With this in mind, I was really happy to hear that director Shane Meadows had made a TV series that reunited the fantastic young cast to further develop the characters. Without (so far) the presence of white supremacist Combo (Stephen Graham) the programme focuses more on the everyday lives of the protagonists three years after the events of the film, and reflects further on the grim realities of a northern town blighted by unemployment and Thatcherism.

In the first episode, Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) had distanced himself from his old friends, feeling guilty about what happened to Milky (Andrew Shim). Last night’s second episode saw him reunited with the gang. It started as with lots of light-hearted action involving drinking and partying, with plenty of laughs, of the kind that make you really warm to the characters. However, just as in the original film, this only made the darker moments hit harder. Lol (Vicky McClure), already struggling with her relationship with Woody (Joe Gilgun), was blindsided by the return of her long-absent father. McClure plays Lol’s emotional turmoil astonishingly well, but it’s the sense of the impact her actions will have on the cast of supporting characters that helps to bring it home to the audience.

Throughout, the camera lingers over a washed out landscape of council flats, bare streets and boarded up houses, backed by a lingering piano soundtrack that contrasts strikingly with the upbeat cotemporary music that accompanies the skinheads’ exploits. It brings home the hopelessness of the characters’ environment – the dearth of opportunities to escape or change. In those bleak shots we see the explanation for everything that happens to the characters.