I loved ‘This is England’ and up until last night I’ve been gripped by ‘This is England 86’.
During last night’s episode, Director and co-writer Shane Meadows was trowelling on the misery to a point where it crossed the Rubicon of believability, and descended into the depths of self-indulgent ridiculousness. The aggravated rape of a teenage girl by Lol’s paedophile dad signalled the low point of a plot that unsuccessfully juxtaposed farcical horse play with abject misery. This robbed the characters of their verisimilitude and I consequently lost all empathy for them. It’s what I would dare to call the ‘Angela’s Ashes’ effect’ where a character is the victim of a series of increasingly unhappy, and therefore increasingly unlikely, experiences. At the beginning of the episode I was eager to find out what would happen to Woody and Lol, but by the time the credits rolled I couldn’t care less, because they didn’t seem real anymore.
Whilst the first two episodes were funny and engaging, I worry that this third episode signals that the best the audience can expect form next week’s finale is a feeling of smug scepticism or profound schadenfreude. It’s a real pity because the acting is exemplary and up until last night I had real feeling for the characters. Meadows needs a harsh editor to excise ruinous elements from the final cut.
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