This Town

I just had to bingewatch this. The 80s was my era, I lived in Brum as a kid and I have always been a bluenose (Birmingham City fan. The Zulu Warriors was the name given to the hooligans associated with the club not all the fans despite the terrace being known as the Spion Kop).

The fusion of the people, the music, vehicles, buildings and cars is all spot on. The only downside wee the ropey Brummie accents and the BCFC logo which the club did away with in 1976, 5 years before this was set.

It would be great to see more but this will probably be the end of the fantastic series The second city rarely makes tv but great when it is.

Beautifully shot, great music, good actors, amazing locations and wardrobe. But it just doesn't come together.

Some parts are rushed while others are lingered on for too long without any real impact, emotional or artistic.

The characters speak like they're in a play - too dramatic, forever reciting someone else's words. You can tell there is a lot of talent on the screen, but it goes to waste. The characters aren't developed in an interesting way, or aren't developed at all. Their arc are murky, not intentionally (which can be interesting) but in a lackluster, clumsy sort of way.

Even the way the songs were edited in felt like they were always missing the punchline, and there were some GREAT songs in this show. It's like the scenes and the music are disjointed, not well-suited.

Dante felt, to me, a very difficult main character. He is so disconnected from anything that doesn't directly involve him (and some things that DO involve him) that it kept making me disconnect and pull away from the show. There were good moments with the other characters that got drowned in lots of scenes of cardboard cutouts of people talking to each other in predictable, wooden dialouge.

It's an entertaining show but could have been so much more.

This just hits the spot. There was such edginess at that time in the 70's/80's, inequality, racism, skinheads, the awful troubles in Ireland, industrial strife and the general failing of society to look after people that needed help. 'This Town' picks bits of that and melts it together in a glorious understanding of it all, with a great core story, fabulous tunes and poetry from the lead actor. He stood so tall he made me feel proud to be British. Please give us more of this raw, untamed, shout out feel good of life. There are stories still to be told. A wonderful TV show. Rock on BBC, you can make great drama.

This 'ode to 2 tone' missed the mark for me unfortunately as a viewer.

It set out with good intentions but was not executed properly. It was trying to do too many things at once which can be done effectively however this is not an example of this being done.

It touches touches on a myriad of issues and themes such as youth subculture, racism, ira, police brutality, concrete jungle in the Midlands in the late 70s and early 80s

But this was not done effectively with lukewarm story which is a bit murky in places and jumpy with no real grit nor proper emotion in conveying such themes.

It does resemble some of the hallmarks of this period with the fashion and bleakness - true - but they do not convey this properly - felt like dress up of a thing trying to be impactful which it wasn't...

It is a real shame as it looked like it had a good budget. I liked the clothing although they could have done a little better with the music tracks. The only real redeeming feature of this is David Dawson's performance which is commendable.

As another reviewer said, they tried to do too much and failed to do anything. They could have done so much more with the music of the time and they failed. But most of all the original music is terrible. The band as such would never have been popular.

Then they tried to shoehorn the IRA into the show. Great, do an IRA show or do a Two Tone show. Not both. Then they tried to add M Thatchers in to the mix. Add a dollop of soap opera and you end up with an uneven pile of crap.

I did enjoy quite a few parts of this but I would have to be convinced about a second series. More Ska/Two Tone and less IRA.