Anybody watched the latest BBC drama ‘This Town’?
Set in the Midlands in the 1980s, it’s a hugely ambitious piece of drama. Apparently written by the Peaky Blinders team. Watched the first two episodes, and have to say after a slightly slow start, I’m hooked.
Set against a great soundtrack too.
This Town – BBC
Haven’t watched it but
…. it starts in 1981 when the Specials were splitting up and the ska revival was very much yesterday’s news. What next, a drama about the skiffle craze set in 1965?
This wouldn’t matter except that people seem to accept drama as historical fact. I don’t trust this current generation with the past.
Yes, seen a few people calling out some of the historical representation – even down to the bus stops showing the current transport logo, rather than the 80s version.
I might be wrong but aren’t all the posters for bands made up names? Seem to be, yet one of the actors wears a Steel Pulse T shirt.
Absolutely. Though for civilians, ska remained a thing. Us cool kids were moving on to Echo and the Bunnymen or whatever the NME was pushing via the Rough Trade cassette ( which still had a Specials track). But I agree that the remodelling of still living history distorts what really happened. If this is what happens in a trivial little corner, just imagine what happens for matters of import. See “punk as a response to the election of Mrs Thatcher”. I don’t recall The Anti Nowhere League and their ilk being upsetting to squares because of their politics. It was more the list of not nice things in their charming song, “So What?”. Punk was responding to Callaghan, the rise of Thatch, and the shit light entertainment pop of 1976, prog and hippie already past their peak by then.
I think of punk as being primarily a response to mass unemployment, which hadn’t really been a thing since before the war.
I think of punk as being record business-sanctioned re-treads of Slade, the Feelgoods and generic heavy rock etc, with the thinnest veneer of politics in the lyrics, to please the NME. Hence The Clash (political, maaaaan!) got more NME covers than The Damned (quirky sense of humour).
(I rather like The Damned…)
Jimmy Pursey has just read your post and exploded.
….actually, he asked someone else to read it and pointed a microphone at them while they exploded.
Huzzah! (Bang! Splat!)
The comments of Vincent and Moose have reminded me of a contemporaneous lyric, social commentary if you will:
“Every Wednesday morning, at about the hour of ten
I give the Queen my autograph, she gives me the yen
The man behind the counter smiles, the door man bows again
Just another day down on the dole queue
But the government must love me ’cause they keep me out of work
They must be saving me for something special
Maybe it’s the job of rolling spliffs for Captain Kirk
Or giving Miss Lovelace her pubic hair-do…”
We’ve all had one of those days.
…and Hubes wins the Ming vase…
Thank Fitz, holds vase aloft turns to thank audience, loses balance and falls to the floor. Ming smashes to tiny pieces.
Another one of those days. Merciless.
Oo yoo callin’ an aneous?
Two episodes in too. It is a bit slow starting but I’m beginning to enjoy the way you can see the future plot being teased out. I’m guessing given the subject and the fact that Steven Knight is wrapped up in the Peaky Blinders film it may be a single series. I hope so I don’t think it lends itself to a contunuation.
I should think given the age of many people on this forum 1981 is right up their strasse.
I lived in Handsworth for a short period, I think 1980. I don’t remember it being so drab.
Kai Tempest is a fantastic wordsmith.
It’s a standard trope that the 70s and early 80s were bleak and grim which anyone who was there knows is compete tosh.
Except for the bits that were bleak and grim, of course.
Things were so bloody bleak and grim, you faced a 40-year wait for the bus into town
@Twang as a Brummie who lived through that time it certainly wasn’t tosh.
The place was dreary and also a bit scary.
The Handsworth riots were well covered and since I lived next door to Chelmskey Wood I can tell you the depictions are very accurate especially the pub The Happy Trooper which I frequented on occasion until it became too violent.
I am 3 episodes in and completely riveted after a slow start.
Definitely not in Brighton if you made your own entertainment. That was how we responded to the grot.
Erm … it’s Kae Tempest (not Kai). It’s an understandable error to make – you’ve probably be influenced by all the wonderful comments posted here by Afterword star Kaisfatdad!
Kae’s Fat Dad would be an excellent AW moniker.
Thanks for the kind word @duco01! “Afterword Star”? In my dreams, I fear.
Kae’s Fat Dad!! Please Moose! Bad Idea!! I don’t think that Tempestuous wordsmith would be too keen about that!
Second episode tonight. Really enjoying it and unaware of any inaccuracies.
Oh look, the bus stop signs are Wrong! Get a life ….
Someone on Twitter pointed out that girls didn’t have septum piercings at that time.
While nitpicking over things like bus stops does seem petty, if you’re going to shoot a series or movie set in an earlier period – particularly one within living memory for the bulk of your target audience – you have to get the little details right or you are going to lose all credibility
There certainly were piercings at that time – Punk had come and gone and it brought with it piercings of all descriptions. I didn’t notice the bus stop signs but they were not exactly prominent. I did however notice that in the shot of Digbeth from a rooftop you could actually see the more recent Birmingham City ground in the distance but I suspect not many viewers would have noticed if they are not familiar with the area.
The shots of Chrlmsley Wood and also of Coventry city centre were very accurate
We’ve had this discussion before re historical inaccuracies – I still maintain as long as the acting and story are good then Wrong bus signs or nose piercings mean not a jot.
God (or the Devil) is in the details, Lodey
Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the Beeb’s
upcoming budget-adjusted Four Wives of Henry VIII
A bus sign destroys integrity? A herd of wildebeest stampeding down the High Street and flattening the bus sign might
No spoilers please
It’s a Steven Knight show so that’s probably going to happen in episode 4.
Either way, let’s hope the line producers have made sure that they got a bus stop that specifies the service for Dudley Zoo
In sticking with the spirit of the thread, I think yo.u’ll find the word I used was “credibility”.
@SteveT
Having grown up in Cov during the 60s and 70s, am looking forward to bingeing this. Went back for the first time in years last summer and the city centre – considered both a paragon and a pariah of inner city planning – didn’t seem to have changed that much.
Pre-WW2 pics show Cov was a beautiful place before the blanket bombings of Nov 41 – later immortalized by the coining of the word “coventrated”.
It was certainly a lovely place to grow up. Sad to see what happened after incompetent managers and unrealistic union leaders caused the UK car industry to commit collective suicide in the late 70s
Coventry? Lovely? I suppose if you’d come from Yemen, or the Gulag, you’d find it boskily attractive. What made it a great place to grow up was the kids. Same as anywhere, really.
@H.P.Saucecraft
United but never divided, that was us
I suspect that septum piercings were more common amongst ‘Punks’ in the US than in the UK. FWIW, I don’t remember seeing any. Google tells me that they became a thing amongst people living on the fringe in the 80s. With that in mind, I asked the tow women I know who fit that profile. My girlfriend on those days had been a skinhead girl photographed by the late Derek Ridgers. My current wife was, in those days, a Hells Angel’s old lady. Tattoos and other piercings were apparently a thing in their circles, septum piercings less so. Perhaps it was a goth thing in the UK.
More of a Crusty thing than a Punk thing, as I recall.
Particularly if you don’t clean and disinfect regularly…
Now its a ‘transexual’ thing.
Bus stops may be an issue for those concerned about detail. if a film or TV drama deals with something we have personal knowledge of it can be hard to ignore. But millions won’t know the difference. It’s a highly credible as a piece of entertainment even if they aren’t right.
I wasn’t planning to watch it, but now I know there’s an anachronistic bus stop issue, I might…
Perhaps not so much anachronistic, as erroneous…
More likely to be a route master
Oo yoo callin’ an oneous?
It was only the disposable coffee cups that got me in to Game of Thrones.
Quite right, when the books specify Sports Direct mugs
Re Inaccuracies, I was watching the ITV drama “Passenger” on Sunday and there was a scene when one of the characters was up early at 6 o’clock to catch a bus to Manchester – strangely waiting in the countryside not the town – and despite the time of year (in last week’s episode set a couple of days before it was snowing) it was a lovely bright morning. Really wound me up!
There is an episode of Torchwood in which Captain Jack reads out the ISBN of the collected poems of Emily Dickinson for plot reasons which escape me know. ‘0 … 1 … 9 …’, he begins. A long-serving bookseller in a previous career, I shouted. ‘But that’s the Faber and Faber edition. Faber ISBNs start 0571. 019 is the Oxford University Press!’
Of course the OUP are known for their reference books and my guess is that the writer picked one up when they needed an ISBN and it stayed in the script until it was filmed. It quite destroyed my faith in the verisimilitude of Torchwood.
I have an extremely similar fit of anger every time Peter Gabriel sings “If looks could kill they probably will”. “If looks could kill they probably WOULD!” I shout back at him. Exactly the same sort of thing as your Torchwood obsession but more grammar-based.
These people – have they no shame?
Peter Gabriel went to a posh school and all. A howler like that in Latin would have earned him six of the best from old Corky.
I disagree; your “correction” removes the prescient threat implied within an assumed subjunctive.
I’d need to consult a dictionary to work out if you’re replying to me or to Gatz. Not having one to hand (am driving on the motorway) I’ll assume it’s to Gatz and say yes, you’re right. Gatz, you fool, the implicit threat in the assumed subjunctive of using a Faber and Faber edition should not be removed. Surprised you didn’t know that.
STUFF YOUR prescient threat implied within an assumed subjunctive UP YOUR ARSE.
Cave, you fellows – here comes old Chiggers!
I can’t as I shoved it up yours for safekeeping. And I’ve told Sir. Or I could.
Knowing PG it was probably deliberate.
‘If looks kill could they probably would.’ Is that what you want?
Close enough.
Nah that sounds shit. Who cares if it is inaccurate?
Not me and Lodey that’s for sure.
I was being kind to Mike on account of his obvious dyslexia. “If looks can kill they probably will” would work better for me. I’m a grammatical purist, and as such a firm believer that rules is rules.
Rules do be that way sometimes
Rules be like …
I thank you for your kindness. Especially welcome since I was taking the piss.
“If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him”
Am I the only one who has no problem with ‘could’, in the sense of ‘are able to’, being using as a synonym for ‘can’?
Yes.
“Can” = am/are/is able to.
“Could” = would be able to.
We can’t/couldn’t say: “If I were Paul Newman I can eat 50 eggs and I probably will” without sounding like a complete foreigner.
Though, on reflection, we can/could say: “Being a tad on the short side, I could hide ‘neath the wings of the bluebird as she sings and I probably will.”
Now I’m confusing myself.
Or couldfusing yourself.
Some people talk wouldness and couldness…
Some of us are would, some merely could.
So, should it be “I can has cheezburger?”
or should it be “I could has cheezburger?”?
I can care less
Could you?
I probably will
Could = would? No. It doesn’t. The former means you have the capability and the latter both the capability and the desire.
You might be capable but refuse to do it.
Couldability Brown?
Could = “would be able to“, as in “If you went to Specsavers you could ( or would be able to) read more clearly.
If I asked my mother “can I go to Brighton” or similar, she would reply I could but wasn’t sure if I would be allowed. So, even though I had the capability, the actual ability to pursue the option was liable to be unlikely.
Doesn’t “going to Brighton” mean something slightly less geographical these days?
Do you mean “getting off at Preston Park” Moosey ?
It’s like going down to Chinatown, only with more sticky rock
Your mother might reply “Yes, you can, you’re in your late 50s, you don’t need my permission” or she might reply “well, you could, but I’m not sure if you’ll be allowed because of the restraining order”. In the first case she is expressing that it’s a feasible and realistic proposition, in the second that it’s a hypothetical proposition. Peter Gabriel mixes the hypothetical (if looks could kill) with the realistic (they probably will). My thesis is that it should be one or the other.
Try telling your mother you don’t need no steenkeeng badges. You’ll get the back of her hand, mark my words.
Late 50s? (Blushes and swoons)
Car models and registrations irk me. A programme set in 1982, and they’re driving a 1985 Ford Sierra … wrong
Levi Brown’s duffle coat is a thing of beauty.
It looks like the sort of thing someone who needed big notebooks to contain his burgeoning collection of car number plates or anachronisms in TV shows might wear
I have one of those coats
(but only mental notebooks)
Your man Archie Valparaiso found the first series of Narcos unwatchable because the End Boss’s accent was regionally inaccurate.
The contrails in Zulu didn’t stop it being a hugely popular film.
The example to cite here is Quadrophenia, which makes almost no attempt to disguise the fact that it was made in 1979, partly because the film had a budget of about ten bob but mainly because standards done changed.
Fast forward to the noughties and it’s “Sorry, Don Draper wouldn’t have been able to buy those cufflinks until May 10th 1966 at the earliest”
I always look forward to the 125 train zipping past Jimmy’s bedroom window.
Most films used to have glitches like that. Nowadays, you can fix them in post-production in about 5 minutes.
ThIngs were a lot different a few years back. On one commercial we shot in Shanghai in the early 90s, we were viewing the rushes and someone pointed out there was a scratch on some of the film stock.
It was most visible over a kid’s face that on a shot that lasted just over a second – roughly 30 frames of film.
Even using what was then state-of-the-art Paintbox computer software it took us most of the night to correct the mistake
The BBC’s entertaining murder mystery series, ‘Beyond Paradise’ that continues the tale of a hapless but brilliant police detective now relocated to the UK from the Caribbean, claims to be set in the fictional Devon village of Shipton Abbott.
Having enjoyed the more exotically located previous series, ‘Murder In Paradise’ we’ve also watched the continuation series, which is fun, but as south Devon (and Cornwall) are my home turf, I confess that I now get as much pleasure from spotting the geographical continuity impossibilities as I do from the plot denouements explaining the apparently impossible murders.
But that’s like every fillum/ TV series. If it’s based in your neighbourhood you shout ” How can you get from there to there without passing St Christopher’s? That’s not right!”
Then you realise virtually every fillum/TV series is shot in multi locations and think “Of course it doesn’t matter unless you’re some kind of twatty obsessive pedant who thinks a Wrong bus sign takes away from the story”.
And, of course, it’s huge fun “spotting the geographical continuity impossibilities”… doesn’t spoil the
appreciation of a good fillum/TV series in any way
Morse was great value for those of us who lived in Oxford, involving frequent dizzying warps in the spatial continuum. HAHALOL we went, smirking knoledgably.
See also: Northumberland as it appears in the hit ITV series Vera.
Mrs M: “That’s a clever car, she’s done 40 miles in two seconds”
Yes big fans here. Also of Death in Paradise known as DIP here. The DIP Christmas Special was phoned in but the After Paradise was a gem.
I’d rather have all my teeth pulled out by a guy with a blood-stained apron and a pair of rusty pliers than watch another episode of DIP.
You’ll have to wait. I’ve been here for two hours and ther are several hundred thousand disgruntled viewers in front of me
Just looked at the queue – “several hundred thousand” is a tad of an understatement.
I should add that I’ve spent the last week with aged in-laws. There’s just so much Bargain Hunt, Father Brown, DIP any man can take. Ignore tomorrow’s headlines in The Argus, ” Old couple slain in a bloody massacre. Police looking for a man who they believe has fled to France”…
Reruns of Merde She Wrote are big with the oldies across the channel
DIP is a much more promising title than Death in Paradise.
There’s a place for hokum, and these two are splendid hokum. I’m fed up with those bringing their self-procalimed critical dramatic faculties to bear on cheery TV programs simply made to entertain. I don’t want to read high art novels while trying not to get travel-sick rumbling along on a lurching British train, and I don’t need high-cred ponce-approved television drama when I’m collapsing on the sofa after a working day. So DIP or BP are just fine thank you very much.
Blimey, does that mean we can’t criticise anything any more? We watch plenty “crap” undemanding critically-panned telly and often reserve Saturday night for a romcom movie (we live on the edge and fear no-one). That doesn’t prevent me from believing DIP is absolutely awful with stereotyped characters, absolutely lame plots and no redeeming features apart from nice location shots. IMHO of course and as such completely personal and in the end means not one single jot.
I’m with Lodestone here, for what may be the first and only time. However, I haven’t seen any of the “telly” mentioned in this thread, for a number of reasons, one of which is sure to be “because crap”. It’s nothing to do with elitist critical dismissal (what other kind is there?), and nothing to do with the boilerplate populist response “it’s only entertainment, fuck off!” Entertainment, in any medium, can be intelligently-made, for an intelligently-made audience, or it can be Hallmark dumb for the comfy jumper demographic with the cushion in its lap. Lodey and I, well, we have standards. Not lofty pretensions, we just appreciate something that’s worthy of our intelligent attention and engagement.
(Next: I agree with Dai about something. No flipping!)
A thoughtful and very wise post, apart from the”agreeing with Dai” bit – in your sordid dreams, pal
“Lodey and I, well, we have standards”
It was all going so well – but I think this is where you lost the room, HP…
Who needs the room, when Lodey and I are on the terrace, the starlight dancing in his hair?
Sounds like the pair of you need to get a room rather than worrying bout losing one
Next you’ll be telling me you think that Strictly falls below your bar of intelligent attention and engagement. That’ll be the point when I strike you from my Christmas card list, you fiend.
I have never seen it. Not once. Science fiction? No! Science Fact! But I’m sure if I did watch it, with my signature open-mindedness, I’d find it the usual chav glittershow to keep a fat, stupid audience happy on its couch, and the smirking so-bad-it’s-good crowd (do they still have students in the UK?) up for a bit of “great telly”.
Strictly was great fun in the beginning when you recognised the celebrities. Now it’s just hackneyed clichéd pap
Death In Paradise and After Paradise – gentle tv with an Agatha Christie bent at its (gentle, careful now) best
I’ve seen the occasional episode but until today’s The Rest is Entertainment podcast I hadn’t realised that it’s Call the Midwife big.
The Midwife Big?
Why, is for special big baby? She specialist?
(and why we talking like this?)
Because we could.
@Gatz
Call the Midwife big?
Better not do so in Scotland or you’ll find yourself up before the procurator fiscal for hate crime
Pavlovian response – I can never hear the phrase “procurator fiscal” without hearing this music in my head:
Good spot! As played by the wonderful Iain Cuthbertson – soon to be back on TPTV as the fabulous Charles Endell Esquire in reruns of Budgie
I didn’t know that – huzzah! Laughin’ Spam Fritter all round!!
Bergerac managed to drive into a tunnel in Guernsey and come out in Jersey in the intro.
So that’s what the Germans were up to during the occupation. They kept that one quiet.
Wrong direction, Fritz!
“Now It Can Be Told”
For you zer overpriced new potatoes is over.
Really enjoying it now. In episode 3 there is a brilliantly shot scene.
The one with the hoverboards? I agree.
Yes, agree on Ep3. Some brilliantly shot scenes.
@Clive
@Native
Blimey, it’s getting like 1980s bus routes round these parts. You wait ages for one post about brilliantly shot scenes to come along and then two arrive one after the other
Just watched episodes 1-4 in a binge and it’s great! I arrived in Brum August ‘81 and so enjoyed location spotting. And, paging @stevet, the recreation of The Happy Trooper. Was it anything like that inside? I was far too scared to go in, but several of the staff at Marstons Green Hospital called it their regular, I recall.
Carmen’s club is now the site of Subterrania, where Lankum played last year, as part of Birmingham Experimental Noisefest (or something like that.)
The soundtrack album contains five tracks by Fuck the Factory. They won’t be getting any airtime on wunnerful wadio wun with a name like that.
In the spirit of the Afterword, I liked the first episode but went off it when everyone else liked it…
Well, having finished watching it last night – not sure it fulfilled the promise of the early episodes. I think I preferred it when nothing much was happening – felt slightly rushed and cluttered towards the end.
It got a bit hazy existential liberty taking on plausibility, as they all were shoehorned into making sure series 2 was commissioned, by the end of the last episode. I wonder how long, in said series 2, before a character or two cross pollenate from Peaky Bs? My moneys on the “Ra”.
Lacking any musical ability and being too old and lazy to start learning
Would love to get the phone number of the person who taught
Fiona the bass in the few days that passed between episode 5 and 6
I finally watched it, as Mrs F has been away with work this week.
Did anyone else notice the fish-eye lens effect on the close-up shots? Faces were in focus but the corners were blurry. Either psychedelic (man), or just distracting and/or bloody annoying.
No. Crystal clear. Specsavers?
Cinematographer Ben Wheeler used Hawk V-Lite Anamorphic lenses on The Tourist. Perhaps he used them on This Town, too.
Bah!