New drama This Town has music at its heart
it came to making This Town, the new original six-part drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, it was vital for all the key elements to feel authentic.
Featuring Downton Abbey actress Michelle Dockery, Django actor Nicholas Pinnock and rising stars Levi Brown and Ben Rose, among others, it’s set in 1981 Birmingham against a backdrop of simmering social tension, political unrest and threats of violence, with tricky family dynamics tying it all together.
The series follows a group of young people trying to find their path in life. They find it in music, combining their talents to form a band and break into the region’s thrilling music scene erupting at the time.
But before getting on to the cast and songs, the first character the team needed to get right was Birmingham itself. While some filming took place at Knight’s new Digbeth Loc. Film and TV Studios, a lot of the series was filmed on location in and around the Midlands city.
Both creator and writer Knight and series director Paul Whittington were eager to capture the spirit and enerWhen gy of these places at that point in history, including at two council estates that play an important part in the story.
“Paul’s done such a brilliant job,” says Knight. “It’s brilliant, it’s glamorous, it’s dramatic,” he adds of how Whittington brought the council estate settings to life.
“The idea is that the [housing] blocks and the council estates look beautiful,” he adds, acknowledging estates can sometimes be portrayed in a negative light.
Thankfully for Whittington, getting in with the locals wasn’t difficult.
“They were actually very welcoming to us. I mean, if you say you’re working with the guy who made Peaky Blinders, a lot of doors open,” says Whittington, smiling. “So that was a definite advantage. The Brummies are rightly very proud of that show.”
Of course, Peaky Blinders – the mega popular period gangster crime drama starring Cillian Murphy, which ran from 2013-2022 – was also set in Birmingham. Knight, who grew up in an area called Streetly on the city’s borders, has become famed for his love of the region.
In many ways, once again, This Town is a love letter to Birmingham and nearby Coventry, and the series has personal roots for Knight.
“This was the era I grew up around, I experienced similar places,” says Knight.
This Town, BBC One tomorrow