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This Is England '88


Devon Malcolm

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I'd forgotten about that, actually, it came in some montage in the second to last episode, didn't it? Seemed odd to crowbar that in for no reason, I guess they might address it in this.

It was at the end of the second episode. There were a good dozen things that just never got paid off in any fashion. And at the time, it can't have been because they were setting up for a sequel, since they didn't know how successful it'd be. I don't know if they didn't want to focus more on Harvey's thing because Lol and Kelly were doing the "my dad's evil" gimmick as well, but if that's the case then they shouldn't have done it at all. There was quite a lot of lazy writing in it. This new series might be a bit different... Should be closer to a Meadows film anyway, it was less regimented than the '86 shoot. '88 was intended as a single two-hour thing but he got Channel 4 to change it because they shot more than planned.

 

Odd that they used The Smiths in the trailer as well considering they had split up the year before.

Don't know what involvement Meadows would've had with the trailer, but he never uses a purely of-its-time soundtrack anyway, on the basis that people never only listen to music from the same year they're in. I think there was a fuck-up in '86 with Kelly wearing a Cure t-shirt from 2000, but I'd not have noticed that had people not pointed it out.

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The whole issue with Harvey's dad beating him, wasn't that a highlight as to why he was a bully in the playground in the film?

 

Quite possibly. I'm sure it will be one of the issues they address in this series, though.

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The whole issue with Harvey's dad beating him, wasn't that a highlight as to why he was a bully in the playground in the film?

Possibly, but throwing it in for that alone and doing nothing with it is just fanwank. Someone in this thread (possibly Woyzeck?) had a problem with the amount of fanwank nonsense in the series, and that's indicative of the lazy, slapdash way certain scenes were thrown in and narrative threads were created and discarded. I think it was a great piece of telly, but deeply flawed.

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I really liked it, great performances from Woody and Lol. I was surprised at how little most of the gang had to do, but it was just about tying up the main loose ends before '90. It's so bizarre that Banjo, a man of about 50, is mates with seventeen year olds. But my sister's fella would be like that if he was single, I think.

 

Massive Woody/Lol/Combo love triangle ahead in '90, surely. Bit of Milky in there as well, perhaps.

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I really liked it, great performances from Woody and Lol. I was surprised at how little most of the gang had to do, but it was just about tying up the main loose ends before '90. It's so bizarre that Banjo, a man of about 50, is mates with seventeen year olds. But my sister's fella would be like that if he was single, I think.

 

Massive Woody/Lol/Combo love triangle ahead in '90, surely. Bit of Milky in there as well, perhaps.

 

Milky's already had a bit in there. That was the problem.......

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Not read the thread, because I've only just got around to starting this, but Jesus, the first part was awful. And if you're thinking I was waiting to shit on this, because I shat all over '86, I really wasn't. I hoped for better. It's all so broad though. Woody literally looking through the window at his friends to establish how inwardly unhappy he is; absolutely no middle line between really obvious, piled on misery-porn, and really, really bad comedy. And what was with the weird close-up of Woody's cock? Twice! Sexual equality after the required nude scene from Lol?

 

What the fuck happened to Shane Meadows? He's like a GCSE media studies student in his film-making these days.

 

CONFESSION: When Lol was at the bathroom cabinet, I said to myself "If she closes it, and her rapist dad appears in the mirror, I'm out," but although he did (fucking HELL), I'll probably sit through the other two episodes anyway.

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