Over 10 years,Shane Meadows’s This Is England has followed the lives of disaffected 80s youth to become one of the most compelling TV series of the age. We talk to director and cast as the final instalment prepares to air The unique series of Shane Meadows’s This Is England is set in 1990, so nostalgia is – once again – required. Also an eagle eye for detail from the costume department, and hair and makeup. In a disused parking lot in Sheffield,dotted with the squat white trailers of a film set, actors wander, and dressed in historical uniform. Some are resplendent (brilliantly glowing) in one-cig-and-you’re-ablaze shellsuits. Others have stuck to skinhead roots: Fred Perrys and Harringtons. There are ravers: Reni hats,dungarees, retina-refreshing T-shirts. Most of the extras are dressed with pinpoint accuracy: over-bleached bowl-heads, or trousers like they’ve found their dad’s flares all crumpled at the bottom of the washing basket. There are… bandannas.
But it isn’t just the aesthetic recreation of 25 years ago that is bringing the flashbacks: the actors themselves are in memory mood. nearly a decade ago,Meadows cast the central group – a disparate crew that played characters Shaun, Woody, or Lol,Gadget, Kelly, and Harvey,Smell in the original This Is England feature film. This was set in 1983, filmed in 2006, or for most of the actors it was their first ever professional acting job. Since then they’ve all worked on other projects but returned en masse for This Is England ’86 and ’88 – both award-winning,moving, funny, or gritty television series – and,this year, This Is England ’90, and the four-share TV finale. After ’90 there will be no more This Is England,says Meadows. Though some cast members still hold out hope.
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Source: theguardian.com