In a simply fantastic piece of news, the UK's Channel 4 has officially greenlit Shane Meadows' This Is England '90. For the uninitiated, the original This Is England is arguably Meadows' masterwork, a deeply autobiographical work set against the backdrop of fighting in the Falkland Islands and the rise of the skinhead movement in the UK. It's the film that introduced young Thomas Turgoose to the world and also the first time that I realized what a fucking great actor Stephen Graham can be when given material with a bit of meat to it.
The original theatrical film was followed earlier this year with This Is England '86, a four part miniseries that picked up the lives of the original characters three years after the events of the first film, the kids finishing school, getting married and trying to chart a course through life. It was, once again, brilliant.
And now comes word that Meadows will be continuing the story, this time picking up the thread in 1990, with the rise of rave culture and the fervor surrounding the World Cup.
The only possible downside to this is that supervising this latest foray into television may further delay Meadows' long planned horror feature Beware The Devil but at this point I'm more than happy to go anywhere Meadows cares to take me.
The original theatrical film was followed earlier this year with This Is England '86, a four part miniseries that picked up the lives of the original characters three years after the events of the first film, the kids finishing school, getting married and trying to chart a course through life. It was, once again, brilliant.
And now comes word that Meadows will be continuing the story, this time picking up the thread in 1990, with the rise of rave culture and the fervor surrounding the World Cup.
The only possible downside to this is that supervising this latest foray into television may further delay Meadows' long planned horror feature Beware The Devil but at this point I'm more than happy to go anywhere Meadows cares to take me.
I still need to check out '86, the first one was amazing and harrowing at the same time. I've known all of those people, even though my time in the punk/skinhead scene started about 13-14 years later.
Great film, average series. Not sure their needs to be more