Shane Meadows gives ordinary friendship unusual weight in this moving four-part drama. The plotting sometimes forces the pain, especially around Kelly, but a patient ensemble and Stephen Graham’s compelling Combo make the difficult conversations worth staying for.
This Is England ‘90 is a moving, sometimes awkwardly assembled drama that earns our recommendation through the people in it. Across four episodes, director Shane Meadows gives friendship the sustained attention television more often reserves for an investigation. There is pleasure in spending time with this group before the heavier material arrives, and that pleasure matters to what follows. The trouble is that the lighter opening and the more painful stretches do not always feel comfortably joined.
With Vicky McClure as Lol, Joe Gilgun as Richard ‘Woody’ Woodford and Thomas Turgoose as Shaun Fields, the series has plenty of reason to let a conversation run. These are performances we want to stay with, even when a scene is taking its time getting somewhere. The affection does not depend on everyone being agreeable. What holds our attention is the effort involved in keeping friends close once knowing them well has stopped making that easy.
The long dinner-table scene is where that patience pays off. We found it painful to watch, because the cast make speaking plainly seem so difficult. Matthew Gray’s editing allows the sequence its length, and the time spent there becomes part of the discomfort: we have to remain with these people while they struggle through it. There is no need to describe what is said; the actors make us care about what it costs to say it.
Cinematographer Stuart Bentley and production designer Jane Levick keep our attention on the people without making their surroundings a distraction. We are not left coveting somebody’s furniture; we are wondering how long a conversation can continue. The music by Pablo Clements and James Griffith is similarly secondary to the performances. In the dinner-table sequence, that seems the right proportion, since the actors already give us enough to attend to without further encouragement.
Stephen Graham, playing Combo, is especially compelling, and the series feels more concentrated whenever his performance takes hold. Chanel Cresswell’s Kelly is less well served by the writing, with some of her story feeling arranged to secure a particular emotional response. Jack Thorne is the credited writer, and the weakness is a familiar one in intimate drama: we can feel when trouble has been assigned to someone. We remain concerned for Kelly, but there are stretches when that concern has to work against our doubts about the plotting.
As social drama, it is strongest when ordinary companionship is allowed to occupy a substantial part of an episode. Shane Meadows lets the characters take up our evening without continually proving that each exchange advances a story. We value that, though patience with people does not automatically produce a well-shaped series. The shifts in weight and pace sometimes ask the performances to carry more than they should, particularly when a lighter passage gives way to something much harder.
The loose storytelling is a real reservation, though we would still recommend spending these four episodes with this cast. Their company makes the quieter stretches worthwhile and gives the painful ones a reason to exist beyond putting us through an ordeal. Choose an evening when nobody needs the television to improve their mood.
