It was four years after the hugely successful 2006 film when writer-director Shane Meadows decided to develop This is England for TV. By this time, the culture and legacy of the 2006 film was cemented was idolised. This is England seemed to have outgrown Meadows. It wasn’t just TV; was an identity. In 2012, just a year after This is England ‘88, teenagers were smashing windows and screaming “this is England” to the sky. They had Fred Perry shirts and jeans tense from suspenders. They loitered around town; some even shaved their heads. At the time, we just called them “the skinheads”. We didn’t realise there was a whole generation of Skinheads before them. Those I met were living for the aesthetic. Some, however, were living through TV, missing Shane Meadows’ maxim, and worshipping racism.
Why, then, would anyone want to bring the problematic subculture of “skinheads” back to the fore of social consciousness? We are embroiled in a culture in which “life imitating art” is an accepted thing; why would anyone want to put This is England on primetime TV? Additionally, in keeping with the reality of the characters own tragic circumstances, This is England is relentlessly bleak; even in its happier moments some inescapably grim undertones remain. If TV is a form of escapism, the choice made by over a million of the general public to tune in to the finale of the franchise last month is a surprise to say the least.
This is England, however, has been one of the Channel 4’s few consistent hits of the decade. Abrasive and subversive, This is England has avoided the curse of inauthenticity that befell its peers: Skins (with its butchering of a schoolboy and then a psychiatrist in Season 4) and Misfits (who butchered the entirety of the original cast). The franchise expanded Meadows’ microcosm of violent counterculture to represent working class issues and musings on the human condition; all on primetime TV. We survived This is England ‘83, ‘86, ‘88, and ‘90 and all the rape, patricide, gang murder, domestic abuse, infidelity and abandonment that came with it. In fact, it was believable.
Somehow with such a large ensemble cast, the finale of This is England ‘90 marks completion. No character is forgotten about and every seemingly unfinished story-line, harking back to the film, is revisited. With the franchise coming full circle; it reminds us of Britain’s past mistakes and their presence in our world today. With the 21st century resurgence of the National Front and right wing politics in the UK, the importance of a franchise such as This is England cannot be derided. The very culture that sparked the fury of the film mirrors our society today. Seven years later for the characters, in the “last ever episode” of This is England, former Skinhead and renowned white supremacist Combo stands unrecognisable coaching community football, subtly shown to be for men of all races. This is England tells us that we can’t just bury our history. Hair can be regrown. You can swap your Docs for a pair of adidas. Superficially, you can change all you like but you cannot change the past. Mistakes made when ignorant and foolish cannot always be forgiven; they can and will haunt you.
This is England ‘90 provides us with a denouement that pivots solely on the role of forgiveness. Actors Joe Gilgun and Andrew Shim share the painful illustrative scene with enough pathos to last a lifetime. Woody pleads for Milky to forgive Combo for the “unforgivable” act that ended the harrowing film. With the series being is filled with such carefully constructed dramatic irony; consistent beacons of humour, such as Joe Gilgun as “Woody”, find themselves delivering the more meaningful lines of the series. His “forgiveness is fucking underrated, mate” reverberates deftly as Milky pursues revenge against a Combo so changed his acts are no longer reconcilable with the man we knew.
This year, it has been ten years since the film went into production. Fittingly for This is England, it marks the end of a decade and the end of an era for fantastic TV. The entire team has crafted a truly resonant fable that we can almost believe is reality. While the series closes with a heartwarming montage of the reunited This is England family, the selective slow moving shots of Milky over the bleak chords of Toydrum and Gavin Clark singing about a “future with you” gives us the bittersweet ending that this story needed and deserved.
