The much-anticipated new four-part drama This is England ‘86 starts on Channel 4 on 7 September 2010 – in the meantime, courtesy of Channel 4, we have two clips and a press release about the series. For more, see www.channel4.com/thisisengland86.
It’s 1986 – the year Maradona ends England’s world cup dreams in Mexico; the year Top Gun is the highest grossing film; the year over 3.4 million Brits are unemployed and the year Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is leaving school.
On his own again after the gang was broken up by Combo’s (Stephen Graham) terrifying acts of violence, hapless Shaun is a magnet for trouble. Then a chance encounter reunites him with Woody (Joe Gilgun), Lol (Vicky McClure), Smell (Rosamund Hanson) and the others and soon the past is forgotten. The gang are back together and they’re all looking for love, a laugh, a job and something that resembles a future.
Shane Meadows said: “When I finished This Is England I had a wealth of material and unused ideas that I felt very keen to take further – audiences seemed to really respond to the characters we created and out of my long standing relationship with Film4 and Channel 4 the idea for a television serial developed. Not only did I want to take the story of the gang broader and deeper, I also saw in the experiences of the young in 1986 many resonances to now – recession, lack of jobs, sense of the world at a turning point. Whereas the film told part of the story, the TV serial will tell the rest.”
