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This Town comes from the pen of Steven Knight, who brought us Peaky Blinders – a series I’ve still to see.
Opening on Lozells Road, Birmingham in 1981, before it moves on to Falls Road, Belfast and other places, there’s riots aplenty due to the police being complete racists (something which never changed since), and getting caught up in it is young lad Dante Williams (Levi Brown – Payback), having to run away from them, even though he’s just only trying to get home.
Along the way in the plot is the theft of red diesel – which is only legal for use on farms, and not regular roads, but the more interesting part for me is that you can’t beat a bit of ska and two-tone music from the era. In fact, You Can Get It If You Really Want (ahem)
Add in Dante’s meet with record shop girl Jeannie (Eve Austin – The ABC Murders) and that’s some of the basics, but then Knight clearly wanted to be all arty-farty with Dante reciting a poem at the beginning.
It also doesn’t help that the dialogue is a bit muffled and the preview doesn’t come with subtitles, but the whole series will be online from day one, so I might check out a second episode to see if I can get into it – since only one was available to watch prior to broadcast – but it wasn’t working for me, other than the music.
These tweets below, during the broadcast, also summed things up:
#ThisTown that's an hour I will never get back.
What the hell was that all about.— John Swindells (@JohnSwindells52) March 31, 2024
Maisie giving her opinion on #ThisTown pic.twitter.com/BLaxeZvycI
— Jim Taylor (@HuffTheTalbot23) March 31, 2024
https://twitter.com/2tone_avfc/status/1774541703304605904
This Town begins on Sunday night on BBC1 at 9pm, and the whole series will available now at the same time on the BBC iPlayer.
It’s also available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release date of May 13th.
Director: Paul Whittington
Producers: Nick Angel, Charlotte Surtees
Writer/Creator: Steven Knight
Music: Kormac
Cast:
Dante Williams: Levi Brown
Jeannie: Eve Austin
Gregory Williams: Jordan Bolger
Marie: Geraldine James
Deuce Williams: Nicholas Pinnock
Mrs Porter: Seainin Brennan
Robbie Carmen: David Dawson
Fiona: Freya Parks
Lt Col Harley: Roger Barclay
Bardon Quinn: Ben Rose
Eamonn Quinn: Peter McDonald
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.