Steven Knight’s new drama finds the writer returning to his roots.
Steven Knight’s latest BBC drama is This Town, a six-part series starring the likes of Levi Brown, Michelle Dockery, Nicholas Pinnock and David Dawson.
Set in the 1980s, This Town charts the life of Dante, a young aspiring poet, as well as his family and friends, after Dante decides to set his words to music and start a band.
One of the show’s other stars, Ben Rose, recently compared the series with Knight’s hit show Peaky Blinders when speaking with RadioTimes.com.
He said: “Steven Knight, the writer, he has a really incredible sort of voice, I think, and he’s able to create really grounded, naturalistic characters who all speak in poetry, and all have a heightened sense of reality within this really gritty, very earthly world. His language is sort of otherworldly.
“And the way Peaky uses contemporary popular music to contrast with the era, our show kind of has the opposite, because it’s using music of the time, of the era, to make you feel even more immersed in that world.”
But where is the show set and where was it filmed? Read on for everything you need to know about the filming locations for This Town.
Where is This Town set?
This Town is set almost entirely in Birmingham, Coventry and the rest of the Midlands. Dante and his father Deuce live in Birmingham, while Bardon and that side of the family live in Coventry.
The series has been described by Knight as a “love letter to Birmingham and Coventry”, with the writer himself having grown up in Small Heath, Birmingham.
Two specific areas which feature in the show are Handsworth, Birmingham, where a real-life riot which took place in 1981 is dramatised, and the M6 motorway.
Knight explained: “It’s depicting working class life without any sense of sorrow or pity and, rather than that, seeing the glory and the glamour of it.
“I’ve always thought motorways at night are very beautiful, so the M6 is a big character in this, and – not necessarily to live in but to look at – huge, big tower blocks, looking down from the top to the rest of the world.
“I wanted to get all of that in. Luckily our brilliant director Paul Whittington has made it look like a painting.”
Gregory star Jordan Bolger said of the series: “The bones of it – what makes it – is the Midlands. It’s a part of the country that’s given so much culturally over the years but doesn’t really get its flowers.
“Steven Knight has said this show is a love letter to the Midlands. It’s about different cultures that make our country, like Irish, Jamaican and English.”
Meanwhile, Jeannie star Eve Austin added that a lot of the cast “come from very similar backgrounds and experiences”, explaining: “Myself, Levi and Ben are all Midlands kids, which is different to being a southerner or a northerner, as it has its own world.”
Where was This Town filmed?
Filming for This Town, fittingly, took place all across the Midlands, including in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, West Bromwich and Coventry.
Large parts of the series were also filmed at Knight’s own Digbeth Loc Studios in Digbeth, Birmingham, with this being the first major drama production to be filmed there.
Other projects expected to film there in the future include Knight’s own Peaky Blinders movie, which is set to start shooting this year, and MasterChef, which is also set to move production there in the coming months.
Levi Brown, who plays Dante, noted the importance of filming the series in Birmingham, saying: “Something I hope that people will take away is just how beautiful Birmingham can be if you can look at it from the right angles.”
This Town is available to stream on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Sunday 31st March, while the first episode airs on BBC One at 9pm.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
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