Steven Knight on his new Midlands-based drama, This Town

Express & Star

Steven mentions about filming in Coventry and Birmingham, the music scene in the Midlands and the different areas that inspired and feature in This Town. Video courtesy of BBC.

Transcript

00:00 I wanted it to be about four people, the drama of their lives, the places they live.

00:04 They live in Birmingham and Coventry.

00:06 And I wanted to set it up to a situation where

00:11 actually all four of them have no choice but to get famous.

00:16 You walk away from every day, nothing much to make you stay.

00:19 Then bloody hell, you hear a bell ring across the wishing well.

00:24 And this is the dawn of the age of love.

00:28 [BELL RINGS]

00:30 [SCREAMS]

00:32 It's about a period of time that I knew well, the early '80s.

00:37 And it's about this city, which I know well, Birmingham, where I grew up.

00:42 So it's sort of a story of a group of people, four young people.

00:48 And the theme, or the sort of leitmotif of the whole thing, is the music.

00:54 This is what you are.

00:58 [MUSIC - THE BIRMINGHAM SONGS, "TUTONE"]

01:06 There is a style of music which really began in Coventry and migrated to Birmingham

01:13 that was called tutone, which came out of ska and out of reggae.

01:17 People who were sort of almost on opposite sides of a divide

01:23 came together to listen to the same sort of music.

01:26 And it was the music that caused that to happen.

01:29 And you can think of it as corny as you want.

01:31 It doesn't matter, because it's true.

01:33 There was this type of music that felt to be ours for a bit.

01:38 Not for long, but for a bit.

01:41 And as I say, for me, it was associated with football, with Small Heath.

01:45 And because of that, for me, this is the natural sort of successor to Peaky,

01:51 because it's the same area, it's the same socioeconomic group, if you like.

01:58 And again, what I didn't want to do was to say,

02:02 look at these poor people on the council estate. Isn't it awful?

02:05 It's not awful. It wasn't awful. I mean, it is in its own way.

02:08 But this is people enjoying life, glamorous lives in these places that--

02:14 my instruction always in Peaky and in this town is make this look beautiful,

02:18 because in a sense, it is.

02:20 It's our turn in terms of Birmingham and Coventry.

02:23 It's our turn as European cities to really bang the drum and tell our story.

02:30 And this is part of that process.

02:32 Places in Moseley, there's the Crown.

02:39 There was a place-- I'm not sure how long it survived,

02:41 but there's a place called Mother's in Erdington,

02:43 which I really want to recreate, because it was an incredible music venue.

02:48 There were always these places in Brougham where--

02:52 especially the metal boys used to congregate.

02:55 But then afterwards, everybody would meet,

02:57 and no matter what sort of music they were making,

02:59 they would all meet at the burger bar by the Crown and all those places.

03:03 I'm closer to heaven on floor 27, because I can see the M6.

03:07 And when the lifts are fixed, I'll go down on the ground, spin you around,

03:13 and we'll hitchhike to Brighton, where we'll no longer be frightened.

03:17 It's set in Chelmsley Wood Estate, which if you're from this area, you'll know.

03:23 It's a big, sprawling council estate.

03:26 A lot of the tower blocks that were there then have gone,

03:29 so we shot it in a place called Druids Heath, which is only down the road,

03:33 which did have-- I think they're now being demolished, the big blocks.

03:38 And what I wanted to do was to set this thing in those blocks

03:43 and also in an estate called Hillsides in Coventry.

03:46 The camera rolls and you see a shot of something where you think,

03:49 "That's bad. That's rough. That's a really sort of--

03:56 "not deprived then, but it's a lot of people cramped into a small space."

04:01 I'm not from Chelmsley Wood, but from somewhere similar.

04:04 So when you're a kid growing up, it's a playground. It's fun.

04:07 And that's what I wanted to reflect in the way we shot it

04:12 and the way that the characters are, and also the humor of it,

04:15 which is very Birmingham as well.

04:17 Try, try and try, try and try.

04:22 Barton, why don't you just get on with your job and shut the fuck up?

04:25 And why would I do that?

04:27 There used to be a pub called The Gate Hangs Well,

04:29 which is a great name for a pub, which is no longer there,

04:31 but we've recreated that.

04:33 And at the other end of the spectrum, there's the interior of Coventry Cathedral,

04:37 which is just beyond belief.

04:40 And we were lucky enough to get permission to shoot in there as well.

04:43 And the other main location, I suppose you'd call it, is the M6, believe it or not,

04:50 because that's the road that connects the two cities.

04:52 And the lead character is very obsessed with the M6, if you put it that way.

05:00 For me, Digbeth is a very special area, and also Small Heath.

05:06 My parents, as I've said many times, because of Peaky, grew up,

05:10 and most of my relatives grew up in Small Heath.

05:13 So it's somewhere that I've got a big connection with,

05:16 and being a Birmingham City supporter, every other Saturday during the season, I'll be here.

05:22 That expands then to Digbeth, which I think is one of the great areas of Britain in terms of culture.

05:29 I mean, it's rough and ready, but it's, in my opinion, beautiful like this.

05:34 And it's waiting to happen. It's happening already.

05:37 I think when HS2 arrives, there's going to be a big change in Birmingham.

05:42 I hope it won't lose its identity and character,

05:46 but it's this part of Broome that really I think of as my patch, if you like.

05:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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