Old Town blues

by Ben Soton

The BBC’s latest Monday night drama, This Town, is actually set across two towns, or more precisely cities in the 1980s.  It covers some of the politics, music and culture of the period featuring the Handsworth riots in Birmingham as well as the IRA bombing campaigns.  Also featured are the music based sub-cultures of the period; skins, rude boys and Zulus; whilst the involvement of organised crime gives it an updated Peaky Blinders feel.
The story centres around an extended family that cuts across ethnicity, nationality although interestingly not class.  The Birmingham side of the family, mixed race British/West Indian includes Gregory Williams, a soldier in the British Army (played by Jordan Bolger) and his younger brother, (played by Levi Brown) a college student and aspiring musician Dante.  
Meanwhile the Irish-Catholic Coventry side of the family, the Quinns, include Bardon (played by Ben Rose), another college student and aspiring musician; his IRA father Eamon (played by Peter McDonald) and alcoholic mother and ex-wife Estella (played by Michelle Dockery).
The series proves that Michelle Dockery should not be seen as a type-cast actress; she can ably play a working-class alcoholic as well as an aristocrat from Downton Abbey.
It opens with a scene from the Handsworth Riots of 1980 and shows the extent of police racism of the period.  Many of the scenes are intersected with music from the era as many contemporary bands had their origins in the West Midlands.
Much of the plot centres around attempts by Dante to avoid being drawn into organised crime whilst Bardon struggles to avoid being drawn into the IRA campaign by his father.
The plot is further complicated when Gregory, Dante’s brother, is ordered by his superiors to spy on the Irish side of his family. In this sense the drama reflects bourgeois attitudes of the time that are still around – that being Irish makes you susceptible to “terrorism” and being black makes you susceptible to organised crime. To avoid this both Bardon and Dante, along with other teens form a band as a means of escape amid numerous references to the M6 as a way out of Birmingham. Needless to say the essence of the series is that of individualism versus the community.