This Is England '86 (2010)

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: June 16, 2011

This Is England '86 (2010, Complete 4 Episodes)
720p BRRip | MKV | 1280 x 720 | x264 @ 1800-1958 Kbps | AC3 5.1 @ 192 Kbps | 47-49 mins per Ep | ~700 Mb per Ep
Language & Subtitles (idx/sub): English
Genre: Drama, TV series | 4 wins & 7 nominations | UK

Set three years after the events of Shane Meadows award-winning semi-autobiographical film THIS IS ENGLAND, Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), Woody (Joe Gilgun), Lol (Vicky McClure), Milky (Andrew Shim) and the gang are back. With Shaun on the cusp of leaving school, and with the perilous world of adulthood and responsibility laid out before him, life is set to get tough for everyone in Thatcher's era of recession and disillusion. The acclaimed four-part series is Meadows' televisual debut, and promises more of the writer/director's same trademark humour, drama, gritty-realism and nostalgia, all of which helped make the original 2006 film such a cult classic.

IMDB

Episode 1:
It's 1986 and Combo is out of prison following his near-fatal attack on Milky whilst Shaun leaves school certain of two things - he's failed his exams and his mother,Cynth,won't have bought him a scooter like his contemporaries have.Lol and Woody are getting married with catering courtesy of Meggy and flowers stolen from the graveyard by Gadget. However,at the registry office Woody gets cold feet, though the occasion is overshadowed by Meggy having a heart attack, The 'reception' takes place in his hospital room though a disgusted Lol spends more time confiding in Milky that she may have dated the wrong man. Shaun,hit over the head after a stunt to pull a girl by a bullying scooter rider goes wrong,turns up at casualty,thanks to Lol's estranged mother and her boyfriend Mick. He has his wound stitched but does not join the rest of the group.

Episode 2:
After Smell tells Woody and the gang she saw Shaun at the hospital they steal golf buggies to give him a rowdy serenade in the middle of the night and he returns to the fold.He gets a job at Mr. Sandhu's video rental shop but is appalled to find that he is Cynthia's new boy-friend when he catches them in bed and leaves home,sleeping in a toilet. Lol feels no happier. Reluctant to move into the filthy flat Woody has found them - where a junkie died and then putrefied - she returns home but is appalled that her mother has allowed Mick,who once apparently molested her,to come back. She confides in,and sleeps with,Milky,before going to Woody's flat. Gadge has a night of passion with the older single parent Trudy but is amazed to see that her little boy looks just like Meggy.

Episode 3:
On the anniversary of Shaun's father's birthday Shaun is persuaded by Smell to return home and patch things up with his mother,which he does after she has caught them having sex on the sofa. Though living together Lol and Woody are drifting apart and Woody,unaware that Lol is having regular sex with her,asks Milky to act as go-between,which he attempts - unsuccessfully.Gadge,exhausted by Trudy's sexual appetite,leaves her on Harvey's advice but whilst everybody else is watching England play Poland in the World Cup on television,Mick rapes Lol's sister's friend,a girl called Trev,and a badly beaten Combo crashes into Shaun's house.

Episode 4:
After sleeping on Cynth's sofa overnight Combo explains that he has come back to see his terminally ill mother,but by the time he gets to her flat she has died. Lol and Woody sort themselves out and he plans a surprise wedding for her but she fails to show up,having found out about Mick's rape of Trev. She confronts him just as he is about to run out of the house and they have a fight,during which he tries to rape her too and she brains him with a hammer. As she is sitting,stunned,on the floor,help arrives from an unexpected source in an extraordinary act of redemption.

Shane Meadows is in my opinion the finest film-maker in England today, with his tragi-comic, poetic portraits of the English working class. The prospect of a television spin-off of his movie 'This is England' thus prompted excitement but also reservations - there's certainly enough material for a follow up, and with Meadows' involvement, the quality can only be high - but sometimes a story is told and does not need extending. This series is set at the time of the football world cup of 1986, and there's already been talk of another one set in 1990 at the following world cup: might this all be too much of a good thing? On watching it, there are indeed odd moments when the series indeed feels flabbier, less essential than the original; and the occasional lapse towards 'Shameless' territory. But in the main, this is excellent stuff. Thomas Turgoose, the star of the original, is less central here, but still steals every scene he is in; but all the characters are great, including man-child Woody and Vicky McClure's Lol, around whom the plot rotates. The football link is handled lightly, and the final, Meadows-directed episode cumulates in a horrific portrayal of an attempted rape and its aftermath that is handled with an extraordinary grace (unlikely as that word seems to describe the depiction of such an event). Meadows' films aren't loud, but he cuts to the raw edge of human vulnerability like few others; this is easily the best T.V. series of the year, and an important alternative view to the received wisdom on the Thatcher era.
IMDB Reviewer

Rather than make a sequel to his most acclaimed move, Shane Meadows elected to add a four part mini-series to conclude the story started in This Is England, an uncompromising look at the gritty side of life growing up in 1983. Back in 2006 when the film was released, themes of high unemployment and racial hatred were less hot topics than since where the credit crunch has become a global recession and the BNP managed to gain more media interest. And so Meadows takes us back to small town Britain in 1986 -post skinhead posturing but in the midst of England's involvement in the World Cup and a showdown with Argentina which will dredge up the still-raw memories of the Falklands. In this increasingly heated atmosphere Shaun (Turgoose) is about to sit his last exam at school that will be the calm before a stormy few weeks as he enters adulthood.


Bringing together all the original cast for this series was vital for it to be a success - Shane Meadows has an knack for getting the best from actors in the most stripped-bare of situations and This Is England saw impressive results. Here they all slot right back into their original characters enabling the series to get off to a fine start. The first two episodes display a classic trait of Meadows: lure us into a false sense of security. There's an upbeat tone with none of the menace seen in the climatic scenes of This is England. Shaun finishes school to start thinking about his future while his friends Lol, Milky, Woody and Smell are all suffering from disappointments in love, work and life in general. Into this mix of youth struggling for direction comes a few shocking truths that will pushes their emotions to their extremes.


Meadows again uses the innocent looking Shaun as the focal point for the action of This is England 86, his experiences with Smell show a touching innocence even when Shaun's mother walks in on them enjoying each other on the sofa. Meanwhile Lol, Milky and Woody are entwined in a love triangle that isn't doing them any favours. However, it is the reappearance of gang leader Combo (Graham) that stirs up the real trouble and wounds of the past while Lol's dad Mick (Harris) shows he has rapist urges which make for the harshest viewing - though regular viewers of Meadows' films will be expecting a nasty sting in the tale, especially after a brighter start.


Although Meadows again uses shocking scenes to imbue his work with an uncompromising streak, This is England 86 is another example of how he does it so expertly and ensures it's not done just to gain attention. The situations we see here can well be imagined to have stemmed from the experiences he had growing up in Nottingham where he dropped out of school as a teenager. His characters are flawed but doing the best they can to make up for any failings - and while they don't always get it right, their actions are always built on the characters themselves rather than any need for narrative goals. The series gives Meadows a chance to add depth to his characters and as a snapshot of life in the 1980s, it's telling how the clothes and furnishings may be very different to now but the attitudes, social problems and World Cup excitement is eerily similar. It's not for the faint-hearted, but This Is England 86 makes for compelling viewing.

Mike Barnard, Future Movies

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