This Is England '86 (2010)

Recommended

UK

Television Mini-Series

Directors: Tom Harper, Shane Meadows

Writers: Shane Meadows, Jack Thorne

Cinematographer: Danny Cohen

Composer: Ludovico Einaudi

Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Vicky McClure, Joseph Gilgun, Andrew Shim, Rosamund Hanson, Chanel Cresswell, Danielle Watson, Andrew Ellis, Michael Socha, Perry Benson, George Newton, Stephen Graham, Katherine Dow Blyton, Kriss Dosanjh, Hannah Walters

Though the humour is sometimes perhaps a little too broad, particularly in the first couple of parts, Meadows’s follow-up to This Is England (2006) – set three years later, with Shaun leaving school for an uncertain future – is never less than thoroughly entertaining, and, by its tumultuous, painfully visceral final part, it is also decidedly devastating. Iain.Stott