This Town creator Steven Knight, music makers Kae Tempest and Dan Carey and actor Eve Austin introduce BBC One’s ambitious new series about a band coming together against a backdrop of social unrest in the West Midlands in the early 1980s
By Adrian Lobb
This Town is the ambitious new drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. It features social unrest, gangs, violence, conflict, and a whole lot of music. The BBC One series is set in Coventry and Birmingham in the early 1980s – but it is not hard to see modern-day parallels.
The UK is in the grips of a recession following an energy crisis, and working-class communities are bearing the brunt. Unemployment is rising, tensions are high and the heavy-handed policing of black communities is triggering protest.
The series opens with the 1981 Handsworth riots, which came in the wake of similar protests in Brixton and Toxteth. In the Midlands, the IRA are also readying a new campaign of violence. But in the white heat of this social unrest and disruption, creative genius is forged and lives are changed. Because this was also the era of 2 Tone, The Specials and music bridging communities. Across six episodes, This Town shows a band of young soulful rebels coming together to create the music that just might be their escape ticket.
“I’ve always felt that the rise of 2 Tone in Coventry and then Birmingham, which I experienced, would make for a great drama,” says Knight.
“This was a phenomenon that had no architect. It was just the music itself. Black and white kids, skinheads and rude boys, all together in one place dancing to the same music at the same venues at the same time.
“At the same time, Birmingham City had, I think uniquely, a sort of mixed-race football hooligan element called the Zulus. I was by no means part of that because I’m not tough enough or brave enough. But I was a very close observer of what was going on.”
Not for the first time, Knight was able to produce a compelling drama from key moments in the history of the West Midlands.
“I wanted to capture that spirit,” he says. “A bit like with Peaky Blinders, I didn’t want to say, look at these poor working-class people. Isn’t it a shame they’re living in such terrible places?
“I wanted to reflect the joy and the spirit of adventure and people believing they can do things, which was so true of the music culture at the time.”
At the heart of th
