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Shane Meadows on his era

The television series This Is England was born out of sadness. Shane Meadows drama which returns tomorrow for its final instalment started life, in 2006, as a Bafta winning film.

It featured a cast of unknown youngsters, with heavyweight support from Stephen Graham as an older skinhead with links to the National Front. It was a beautifully soundtracked celebration of youth tribes and teenage friendship, threatened from without by a gathering storm of violent racism.

Then, only months after filming, Turgoose mother died suddenly of cancer. And the teenager, who was raised on rough estates in Grimsby, turned immediately to Meadows. rang Shane, and he was on his way to Grimsby at four in the morning, says Turgoose. For the funeral, the director hired a minibus to bring the film cast up to support its young star. was born that day I think, says Meadows. in that van with everyone on a very sad day, when you can help someone.

weirdly became like the gang [in the film] after the event. I think that was why, a few months later, I started thinking we should do something else with it.

This Is England '90 (Photo: Channel 4)

Arriving on Channel 4 in 2010, This Is England also began with a bus journey, with the gang back together and on raucous form on their way to the wedding of the mod/skinhead couple at the heart of the film, Woody (Joseph Gilgun) and Lol (Vicky McClure). What followed over the next four episodes was a feat of dramatic intensity, one of the most powerful television dramas ever made.

Amid the riotous comic scenes depicted by Meadows a director as lord of misrule whose gift for capturing earthy excess has a Bruegel like quality Lol was sent spiralling into darkness. In the climactic scene, she murdered her abusive father (Johnny Harris) with a hammer.

A year later, a third chapter, This Is England a one off Christmas imitation van cleef and arpels bracelet alhambra special that grew into a three part series, followed Lol struggle to cope with the aftermath of the murder, for which Stephen Graham Combo had taken the blame. It was bleaker and more meditative, with the gang fracturing and adult reality invading.

In the four years that have passed since, Meadows has made the Stone Roses reunion film, Made of Stone the realisation of a boyhood dream for a film maker whose career includes the Bafta nominated Dead Man Shoes and the brilliant A Room for Romeo Brass. He has developed a unique voice that mixes the very funny with the very dark.

This Is England '90 (Photo: Channel 4)

Now he back with the long promised denouement of This Is England, set against the backdrop of the acid house/Madchester scene. As ever, though, this won be the glamorous official history, but what Shane calls my version of it

The first house scene in the new series is set in the town hall and looks like any regional disco night. just get a DJ up there, and he say have a good night, get p . And then he just film around you, says van cleef clover necklace replica Turgoose.

always planned to do a big rave thing, Meadows says. It ended up in the Daily Mirror the next day, devil worship in Staffordshire. I was there with a f poncho on and a little hat.

Thomas Turgoose, then 13, in the original This Is England

I sitting with Meadows in an Edinburgh cinema. He looks tanned and relaxed. He just got back from a holiday in Majorca with his wife, Joanne, and children, Louie, four, and Artie, who about to turn seven. It midday and he's ignoring the bottle of sparkling water on the table before him in favour of a pint of lager. He broad shouldered and beefy, a heavy handed middleweight boxer maybe, whom long time friend and collaborator Paddy Considine recalls sporting a black eye at their first meeting on a drama course at Burton College in 1990. He almost fits the description of the working class thug he once described himself as, but for the fact that he radiates not toughness but warmth and volubility.

There great humility there, too. When I ask him what he might have become had his short film Small Time not won an award at the Edinburgh festival in 1996, setting him on the road to a film making career, he decides he would probably be concreting one of three or four lads going around in a van. I loved that.

think I always be telling stories, but I be one of those guys in the pub. I not saying I the best storyteller in the world, but I just got a knack for remembering the lunacy or the violence or the funny thing. As a kid it was always tell about that thing I was naturally that person, from my early teen years when you sat around in winter in bus shelters or disabled toilets.

Meadows mother worked in a fish and chip shop; his father was a long distance lorry driver. Meadows recalls standing on a table performing an Elvis pout for his dad, when he was about five. thought he was Elvis, says Meadows, I heard him play guitar.

Turgoose again, in This Is England '86 (Photo: Channel 4)

As a director, Meadows work is often cinematic there an amazing shot of Lol in despair in TIE 88, out of focus but beautiful, that he just holds and holds. But there also a slightly gratuitous use of slo mo and music to heighten emotion. His genius is in casting and performance.

something about each person that just is meant to be doing that part, Meadows says. could have all the same actors and make swap roles and the whole thing would be rubbish.

I put it to him that the instant he chose Joe Gilgun to play Woody, he had already injected the film with more unpredictable energy than 99 per cent of the competition. is one of the funniest people I met in my entire life. The first time I met him at a casting, he told me a story about how he been pulling a bin bag out of his dog arse. His dog had eaten a bin bag, and he said, started tugging Shane and this whole great f bin bag came out. I was like, he Woody.

In person, the lanky Gilgun is even more vivid than his on screen character, though the boundaries between them are blurred. The rough etched tattoo just above his right thumb is real, his knuckles bear the legend SINK or SWIM, and he has an unstoppable, unfiltered verbal flow.

Some of the original cast from This Is England

In some ways, Woody seems a closer fit for Shane, the natural storyteller and leader of the gang, than Turgoose Shaun. I find the easiest person to write because I hear his voice in my head, he just speaks, says Meadows.

The key element of Meadows method, however, is improvisation. When I ask Gilgun about it, he says, all knock off van cleef pendant improvised. All of it, dude

like foundations, the script. When you read it, it really, really good, and to then just go [he mimes tossing it away].

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