This is England '90

[Red]

Without a doubt, along with the massively underrated Joe Gilgun.

Graham, Gilgun, McClure and Toby Jones are all in the upcoming BBC drama The Secret Agent. Really looking forward to that.

No one quite does it like Meadows though, brilliant director who trusts his cast to get it right with improv. Was reading an interview with Vicky McClure the other week and she was saying at points they plead with Shane for direction and he flat refuses, knowing they'll get it just how he wants it.

Anyone who loves This is England ought to watch his other stuff. Dead Man's Shoes has already been mentioned (Amazing, Paddy Considine is one of my favourite actors) , but A Room For Romeo Brass (Considine, McClure and Andrew Shim), Somerstown(Young Thommo) Twenty Four:Seven, and his low budget debut Small Time in which Meadows also stars, are all brilliant. Small Time is so hilariously low budget...it's that bad, it's good!!

In fact fuck it, his whole back catalogue should be essential viewing for any TIE fans.
The only weak movie there is Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, but that's still worth watching IMO.

Considine's 'Tyrannosaur' is also fucking excellent.

Is Tyrannosaur the one with the Scottish bloke from Traispotting who befriends the battered wife who works in a charity shop? If so yes, brilliant film.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

I dunno. There are some pretty gaping holes in Combo's backstory.

(snipped for space)

Do you not think this is deliberate in some sense. That he's vaguely sketched so that he functions as something of a cipher, a spectre, an empty vessel into which a welter of issues (scare quotes) can be decanted.

Obviously there's a lot of pleasure to be found in this series by taking it as a face value character piece (Bergman on Trent!), and it's clear that Meadows has a lot of affection for the people, the places, the sub-cultures. But the title is an invitation to read it as synecdoche and microcosm too, and it situates itself for that kind of reading with the bookend newsreel montages and wotnot. And from that perspective he becomes more symbol than character, a weight of history and ugliness made flesh, a past that can't be outrun, a guilt unassuaged, the ghost of imperial bovverboys past, etc. This might be being too clever by half, but even the nickname 'Combo' alludes to it, and the symbology is literally inked onto his skin.

And further, though I can't really unpick this satisfactorily, so I'm not really sure, that then posits something about the ending that sits a little uneasily with me. That he dies a tragic martyr; redeemed and forgiven, but silent, unknown, unmourned. I dunno.

 

[Pleg]

whycant you just fucking

enjoy it

!

 

[Spirederman]

Is Tyrannosaur the one with the Scottish bloke from Traispotting who befriends the battered wife who works in a charity shop? If so yes, brilliant film.

Yeah, that's the one Red. Olivia Coleman.

 

[Red]

Yeah, that's the one Red. Olivia Coleman.

Yeah, course, I forgot it was Olivia Coleman.

 

[Captain Scumbag]

@ Carel.

Yes, that is a very good point. There are times when Combo certainly seems, to steal your phrase, more symbol than character.

And I agree about the title. If Meadows' intention had simply been to follow a group of mates growing up in the 1980s, he'd have picked a less provocative title. The one he chose does indeed invite the viewer to make a larger interpretation – to consider whether the story conveys a message about British society/culture that was particularly relevant to that time, or (more likely) something about English society/culture (particularly about race) that endures to the present day.

But I'm unsure what that message is, and/or how Combo's fate (viewed symbolically) serves it. I'm struggling to unpick it, too. I wonder if watching the whole thing in one chunk, rather than in piecemeal form over 10 years, would help. Probably not.

 

[Bobbin']

Finally watched the final episode the other night.

Thoroughly enjoyed the series. Just a quick note about Combo's ending. The white chaps who take him out of the van could also be relatives of Milky?

 

[JustinQPR]

Finally watched the final episode the other night.

Thoroughly enjoyed the series. Just a quick note about Combo's ending. The white chaps who take him out of the van could also be relatives of Milky?

That was my thought initally, I always thought Milky was mixed race?

 

[Red]

It's plausible.

 

[Freakyteeth]

Just rewatching '86, where Combo was taken out of the van in '90 is the exact spot he was parked up in the car, covered in blood, with Shaun in the opening scenes of '86.