There’s a lot of love out there for these characters. It’s partly because they feel so familiar – Shane Meadows captures the tone and temper of done-down but defiant provincial English life unerringly. It’s partly thanks to This Is England’s uncanny sense of balance – there are amazingly few dramas that so convincingly combine warmth, bathos and occasional mundanity with revelation, trauma and even horror. And it’s partly because they’re so lovingly realised by a cast who have grown up alongside – and possibly even inside – their expertly crafted alter-egos. It’s exciting to have them back and a little nerve-racking, too.
‘There She Goes’
The opening credits deserve a word here. Meadows always places his intimate psychodramas in a wider context. And 1990 was, of course, the year that Margaret Thatcher finally decided we had all suffered enough and vacated 10 Downing Street. From the Falklands war to the poll tax riots, Thatcher has always felt like an unseen extra character in This Is England. And here she is, as The La’s play; finally bowing to the inevitable. 1990 felt like a changing-of-the-guard sort of year; new music, new drugs, new PM, new freedoms in the world’s darker corners, even a newly likable English national football team. These changes turned out to be pretty illusory in the end. But even so, these credits are incredibly evocative of a year when, briefly, everything felt up for grabs.
‘Meals we had when we were happy, when we were kids’
As we rejoin them, Milky (Andrew Shim) and Woody (Joseph Gilgun) have some sort of peculiar school dinner-related racket on the go. Lol, Kelly and Trev are all working in a school cafeteria and extra portions of chips, sausages and “coffee whip” seem to be disappearing out the back in Milky’s rucksack. It’s nostalgia; certainly on the part of the characters and probably on the part of Meadows himself.
‘Shaun; Is now a good time to talk about college?’
Poor Cynthia. This can’t be easy for a single mum. We rejoin Thomas Turgoose’s Shaun in full-on grumpy late-teenager mode. He’s mooning around the house, stroppy and directionless. He’s spending most of his time getting “a bit floaty” on the jazz cigarettes with Gadget and Harvey. He’s still hopelessly in love with Smell (Rosamund Hanson), who, inconveniently, has become a goth and hooked up with a fellow student at the art school she attends. So no, mum. This really isn’t a good time to talk about college.
‘It looks a bit like you’re struggling’
That’s the well-intentioned but insensitively expressed verdict of Woody’s parents on the current domestic arrangements of Woody and Lol (the reliably magnetic Vicky McClure). But the thing is; for once, they’re not. Lol’s a dinner lady and Woody’s a stay-at-home dad. But actually, they’re functional and pretty happy. For now. The real action looks likely to involve Gadget (Andrew Ellis) and Kelly (Chanel Cresswell), both emotionally fragile and teetering on the edge of an unhealthy relationship with drugs.
However, the explosive row that’s prompted by Woody’s mum and dad does lead to one of those brilliantly humdrum scenes that Meadows does so well; his folks ring to apologise, Woody’s fine but a bit stoned and watching a documentary. He can’t quite bring himself to hang up on them abruptly, however – and the resulting conversation is as good an (un)dramatic representation of the amiable longueurs of family life as you’ll ever see. Meadows has subsequently explained that the scene was filmed in the same house in real time, with Woody’s parents upstairs, to get a natural overlap. Which is a nice touch.
‘Wacktoria bactoria’
Michael Socha’s Harvey, perhaps inevitably, is now a small-time drug dealer. Very small-time indeed – tonight he sells a quid’s worth of hash to Cliff and Higgy, a couple of wedge-cut, stonewash-clad losers who have hatched a bizarre seduction plan apparently known as “sniff-banging”. No, me neither, although Meadows is adamant it’s a thing. The resulting scene, in which a girl called Sonia experiences some of the least salubrious sex of her life in the upstairs room of the local social club, would be mildly disturbing if her suitors weren’t so utterly hapless. Still, they do entice her up to the “VIP area” with the words “Des Walker might be coming down”, which Nottingham Forest fans of a certain age will regard as one of the best chat-up lines of all time.
‘What you need, mate, is more drugs…’
Downstairs, things are getting rather more interesting. There’s a “Madchester Night” in full swing. Shaun’s had a weed-induced whitey but Harvey’s speed has got him through it. This may be a mixed blessing because he’s about to meet his slightly posh-sounding, black-clad love rival Harrison (and smack him in the mouth). But first, it’s time to dance. This, one suspects, will be the narrative and emotional heart of This Is England 90 – the euphoric and transformative effects of music and ecstasy culture doing battle with the real, sometimes grim realities of growing up and dealing with what’s in front of you.
Notes and queries
An intriguing start but at this stage, no clear plotlines have really emerged aside from Shaun’s romantic misery. Where do we think this is going?
No sign of Combo as yet. When will he rear his head? Meadows likes to hold him back – he even did in the original film when Stephen Graham’s Hollywood commitments weren’t quite so substantial. He’s like a showrunner’s special power – dynamite that must be deployed precisely and sparingly.
Woody and Lol are clearly now old. There’s a lovely exchange when Trev and Kelly are trying to persuade Lol to come to the baggy night and she’s confused about some detail of the new music scene. Their amiable joshing and Lol’s momentary sensitivity about her ignorance make for a sweet, telling moment.
Goths, metallers, baggies, ravers and indie kids. Is it just age making the past look more vivid and vital or were pop culture’s various tribes more distinct and more adversarial back in 1990? Maybe it’s just a function of our current age of free-music superabundance and a reflection of how comprehensively music has been co-opted for commercial purposes. But these embryonic moments of youthful identity-formation just don’t seem to interact as seriously with the wider culture as they once did. Either way, parts of the This Is England series have always felt like paeans to those seemingly trivial but still heartfelt divisions. It’s tempting to wonder how much Shane Meadows’ Stone Roses film (which delayed the making of This Is England 90) have fed into the making of this.
Sweepstake time: Exactly how many times will we hear Fool’s Gold during the course of these four episodes? My money’s on loads.
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