THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

This Town

BBC1

1981. For those that can't remember, or were not yet born, the 80s wasn't all New Romantics, Big Hair, shoulder pads and City-boy yuppies with Porche 911 turbos. At the start of the decade there was mass unemployment, recession, inner city riots and general miserableness. The Thatchertolla was the most unpopular PM on record (the Falklands War and an improvement in the economy saved her bacon in 1982). As a young person though, it was a golden era for music. Punk was waning, being replaced by New Wave, post-punk, a Two-Tone led ska revival and electronica. Rap was really growing and disco/soul/jazz-funk dance music was huge. It means that my record collection is MUCH better than yours, you loser.

Out of this era comes a prime time series from the creator of Peaky Blinders. Now, I never watched PB, so I can't say if that's a good thing or a bad thing. However, I'm three episodes in and I'm really enjoying it, despite a couple of minor reservations. Set in Birmingham and Coventry, this is a multi-path story centered on an extended family who are a mixture of Irish and Jamaican immigrants and more importantly, their first generation children.

Lead character Dante is a weird lad, a poet and a dreamer (yeah, calling the poet Dante is annoying, when his elder brother gets saddled with Gregory). Said brother Gregory is a proper hard geezer who was a bouncer for a local gangster (who is at the heart of another thread in the story) but joined the army to get away from what his life was becoming. Their cousin Bardon is the son of an IRA man, part of an active cell in Coventry, who are keen to pull Bardon into the cause. Skinhead girl Jeannie is a musician who wants Dante to write the lyrics to her songs, their friendship leading to some serious violence involving her boyfriend and his mates, a bunch of skinheads who are part of the Birmingham City Zulus. Bardon is a good singer, having been raised to sing Republican rebel songs. The story's arc presumably sees them forming a ska band to get away from their various problems but we'll see.

The acting is good across the entire cast, especially the young leads. The look of the thing is great too (shitty, graffiti covered underpasses, grim tower blocks, scruffy council estates and awful pubs. The clothes are great too). It made me very nostalgic. It's definitely worth you giving it a go.

BTW the soundtrack is bloody great; lots of bangers but with a few odds and sods inserted to support the narrative.:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hmh357

This Town

BBC1

1981. For those that can't remember, or were not yet born, the 80s wasn't all New Romantics, Big Hair, shoulder pads and City-boy yuppies with Porche 911 turbos. At the start of the decade there was mass unemployment, recession, inner city riots and general miserableness. The Thatchertolla was the most unpopular PM on record (the Falklands War and an improvement in the economy saved her bacon in 1982). As a young person though, it was a golden era for music. Punk was waning, being replaced by New Wave, post-punk, a Two-Tone led ska revival and electronica. Rap was really growing and disco/soul/jazz-funk dance music was huge. It means that my record collection is MUCH better than yours, you loser.

Out of this era comes a prime time series from the creator of Peaky Blinders. Now, I never watched PB, so I can't say if that's a good thing or a bad thing. However, I'm three episodes in and I'm really enjoying it, despite a couple of minor reservations. Set in Birmingham and Coventry, this is a multi-path story centered on an extended family who are a mixture of Irish and Jamaican immigrants and more importantly, their first generation children.

Lead character Dante is a weird lad, a poet and a dreamer (yeah, calling the poet Dante is annoying, when his elder brother gets saddled with Gregory). Said brother Gregory is a proper hard geezer who was a bouncer for a local gangster (who is at the heart of another thread in the story) but joined the army to get away from what his life was becoming. Their cousin Bardon is the son of an IRA man, part of an active cell in Coventry, who are keen to pull Bardon into the cause. Skinhead girl Jeannie is a musician who wants Dante to write the lyrics to her songs, their friendship leading to some serious violence involving her boyfriend and his mates, a bunch of skinheads who are part of the Birmingham City Zulus. Bardon is a good singer, having been raised to sing Republican rebel songs. The story's arc presumably sees them forming a ska band to get away from their various problems but we'll see.

The acting is good across the entire cast, especially the young leads. The look of the thing is great too (shitty, graffiti covered underpasses, grim tower blocks, scruffy council estates and awful pubs. The clothes are great too). It made me very nostalgic. It's definitely worth you giving it a go.

BTW the soundtrack is bloody great; lots of bangers but with a few odds and sods inserted to support the narrative.:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hmh357

This Town

BBC1

1981. For those that can't remember, or were not yet born, the 80s wasn't all New Romantics, Big Hair, shoulder pads and City-boy yuppies with Porche 911 turbos. At the start of the decade there was mass unemployment, recession, inner city riots and general miserableness. The Thatchertolla was the most unpopular PM on record (the Falklands War and an improvement in the economy saved her bacon in 1982). As a young person though, it was a golden era for music. Punk was waning, being replaced by New Wave, post-punk, a Two-Tone led ska revival and electronica. Rap was really growing and disco/soul/jazz-funk dance music was huge. It means that my record collection is MUCH better than yours, you loser.

Out of this era comes a prime time series from the creator of Peaky Blinders. Now, I never watched PB, so I can't say if that's a good thing or a bad thing. However, I'm three episodes in and I'm really enjoying it, despite a couple of minor reservations. Set in Birmingham and Coventry, this is a multi-path story centered on an extended family who are a mixture of Irish and Jamaican immigrants and more importantly, their first generation children.

Lead character Dante is a weird lad, a poet and a dreamer (yeah, calling the poet Dante is annoying, when his elder brother gets saddled with Gregory). Said brother Gregory is a proper hard geezer who was a bouncer for a local gangster (who is at the heart of another thread in the story) but joined the army to get away from what his life was becoming. Their cousin Bardon is the son of an IRA man, part of an active cell in Coventry, who are keen to pull Bardon into the cause. Skinhead girl Jeannie is a musician who wants Dante to write the lyrics to her songs, their friendship leading to some serious violence involving her boyfriend and his mates, a bunch of skinheads who are part of the Birmingham City Zulus. Bardon is a good singer, having been raised to sing Republican rebel songs. The story's arc presumably sees them forming a ska band to get away from their various problems but we'll see.

The acting is good across the entire cast, especially the young leads. The look of the thing is great too (shitty, graffiti covered underpasses, grim tower blocks, scruffy council estates and awful pubs. The clothes are great too). It made me very nostalgic. It's definitely worth you giving it a go.

BTW the soundtrack is bloody great; lots of bangers but with a few odds and sods inserted to support the narrative.:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hmh357

I’ve watched a couple of things back to back this week.

3 Body Problem

From the team that brought you Game Of Thrones, and somewhat like that it moves at an extremely slow pace. It’s a good premise though. Some shadowy agency discover that earth is going to be invaded by an alien species. But the twist, and it’s a good one, the planet they’re from is 400 light years away. So it’ll take them 4 centuries to get here. But hold your horses, there's an even better twist. They’re obviously far more advanced than us, but we’re developing faster than they did. Therefore, when they arrive on earth, we’ll be technologically superior to them. So this first series is focused on the aliens trying to stymie our development.

In all honesty it wasn’t great, but like Thrones I’m assuming it’ll pick up the pace as it develops.

Wreck

I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have started this had it not been for one of the actors just being announced as the main character in the next Game of Thrones spin off, but we started this tonight and couldn’t stop until the end of the first season. I’m awful at summaries but I’ll give it a go.

Set on a cruise ship, the basic premise is that the main character, Jamie, lost his sister in the preceding cruise as she supposedly jumped off the ship. To try and find either her or the truth to what happened to her, Jamie enrolls as a crew member and with a couple of friends investigates his sister’s disappearance. Throughout the first 6 episodes we learn the truth behind it all however, as crew mates go missing and a killer duck mascot is seemingly on the lose…

There’s 2 seasons available on iplayer and I’m very certain we won’t wait long to start season 2.

The Intruder: Hes watching from within

A channel 5 documentary about a rapist who terrorised communities in Bedfordshire in the early 80's, who became known as The Fox.

For a start, this is not a very nice story and isnt meant for entertainment purposes due to the nature of the content but I will explain why it was interesting to me in a bit.

There is nothing remarkable in the format, lots of talking heads and fictionalised cut away shots. What was interesting for me was the village I lived in was flooded with police and search teams on three separate occasions as part of the manhunt. I mean absolutely flooded with armed and non armed officers, search teams, dogs and handlers, helicopters, the works. There were woods, fields and many many places one could hide all around us so I guess there must have been some intelligence or belief he was there for them to come en masse three times.

As a kid it was all very exciting but I guess we didnt really understand the gravity. Hell, groups of us used to go up the hills and woods searching for gods sake. I think it went on for several months or it certainly felt like it at the time. They finally caught him and he got a long sentence.

I dont really recommend it as such due to the content but it really brought back that time for me when our little village became part of the horror story.

Anyone who was living locally at the time will have memories of this. My wife was living in Leighton Buzzard when this was happening. She speaks of the young women being pretty scared at the time.