This Town BBC 1

[Aquarius1234]

This Town starts tonight 9PM bbc 1

I neve really got into peaky blinders but it's the same writer.
Period drama set in the early 80s. Part family drama, part political , part music scene.

I’m enjoying it, but can’t cope with too many fingers. I really like Dante the dreamer, I’m apprehensive that it will be downhill all the way for him. I was 21 in 1981. It definitely was grim. I had 1 pair of shoes and that was normal. Remember punk being in the mix more. I can’t help thinking Special Branch had enough info to stop that bomb, and the technology to trace the call. Bardon will surely have to come back?

I am still enjoying but so far the music side of the story (which I thought was going to be the main theme) seems almost incidental. Also, feels like it should have been set in 1979 at the beginning of Two Tone rather than 1981 when it was in full swing.

It does sound a bit disappointing. I was imagining loads of good music, threads etc. Is it worth it? I was about six in 1981, so don't have many memories at all of the time and no vivid ones; I really only know the music and about the IRA etc from later on.

Definitely picks up episode 2/ 3.

😂
I know! I just imagined that they were random words like "jumpermousemousse" or combinations of numbers like "565899". I don't think they need worry about using a realistic format! I wasn't expecting them to reveal the real codes.😂
It seems odd to have used the name of one of the most well known members of the IRA ever! Maybe they did!

His mother is the drunk woman (Michelle Dockery) who came to his Nan's (her mum's) funeral.

Overall am enjoying it, even if not as much ska as I was hoping (so far anyway). The mum's rendition of Over The Rainbow at the funeral was very moving.

Ah sorry I mean Dante's mother, where is she?

Heaven, @Clingfilm …

virgil was in peaky blinders and he is from coventry using his real accent and dante is from halesowen a few miles away. i'm from birmingham myself....dante's accent would be more black country and think the birmingham accent was slightly forced.

I vaguely remember the beautiful one from PB.

But it was the diction / delivery / use of words that seemed other worldly, rather than accent, per se.

I don't know. Did she die or did I imagine that?

Absolutely unbelievably unrealistic portrayal of the IRA. The dad, the priest I could go on. Total nonsense and they could have made something so good with the material of the time - Thatcher’s Britain 10% unemployment 2 tone. What a wasted opportunity!

I'm still enjoying it 3 episodes in though it's slow. Somehow I like the dismal concrete background landscapes to the scenes - I'm finding it refreshing.

The colours are amazing - Jeannie’s lipstick, the poppies in Matty’s garden, lights at night, shop signs …

The only thing (apart from the rubbish ‘poetry’) that gave me pause was the state of Estella’s flat, pre-burglary. I was a very young adult in the early 80s - mostly penniless - but I never saw anyone not on drugs living like that. Surely the same over-protective and territorial family who went into battle for her would have scraped off the shredded wallpaper and painted the walls and hung new curtains?

(I remember not being able to watch ‘Barry’, despite endless excellent reviews, because the squalor just seemed far too staged and unreal.)

we didn't need angst ridden teenage poets, we had John Cooper Clarke

Does anyone find Bardon rather beautiful?

Wasn’t that the point? The (fictionalised) IRA wanted to use him because he was beautiful.

I'm inclined to agree.
I'm only 2 episodes in, and will carry on watching as people say it gets better, but I feel this isn't what I was waiting for when I heard they had made a drama series set in Bham and Coventry, which was all about the 2 tone music and the lives of the people it arose from.

I was really looking forward to what I thought it was going to be.

Actually … I’d say that was one of the best things about the series. It is about clubs and drugs and fighting and music - everything one (at least, I) might expect in a story about the creation of an 80s band - but nothing comes in quite the shape we’d anticipate. It’s all a bit … sideways.

One of the newspaper reviews mentioned the superficial and heavy handed approach to race relations at the time. That’s certainly true. We got a lot of police violence - but I would have liked to know something of Dante’s college life, and what sort of aspirations his teachers had for him. If any. And I’d have liked more background on his brother’s journey into military life. And maybe more on their father’s life at work - beyond the leaving of it.

Less shit poetry, more depth!

i liked it. was a bit slow at times though.
i was 20 back then and remember the IRA bombings and hunger strikes. loved the sound track.

It has a certain something. The acting is good and it needs to be because some of the action is somewhat surreal: such as the fingers.
I don’t remember anyone in England talking about the ‘Ra’ in the eighties - or even now to be honest. Am I just out of touch?

My problem is i dont actually like Dante very much, think hes up himself way too much.. but i do like Bardon / Barton, poor bugger

Actually just realized, Bardon reminds me of Marc Bolan!

Before my time but thought it was amazing. Hope there’s a season 2.