This Is England '86

Individually, this was fine but compared to the film I really didn’t like this series. There are some parts about it I really did quite like but there are far more cons than pro’s so I’ll list them here. I really just feel like This is england would have been so much better as a stand alone film. The original film was absolutely brilliant and it felt like it had a definite poignant point to make whereas this felt like it was cramming so much drama in every nook and cranny just to have more drama in the series. It just doesn’t have the same feel. I think if they made the series about an actual issue similar to the film it could have been so much better. I feel like this whole series and the others sort of dampen the ending of the original film because, yes, it left the audience with a lot of questions which I think was a good thing and added to the power of it. I don’t like how they made lol really irritating for the entire series and I know it was for like her whole overarching story but she just did some things that proper cheesed me off. They completely changed pretty much every character from who they were in the film and although some of them worked they were all unnecessary. That random bully from the first one is suddenly now part of the gang with genuinely no explanation whatsoever and that pukey sods buggered off. Smell was also quite a bit more odd in this. I really liked her character in the film and I still like her to an extent in this I just thought it was worth noting A lot of character choices made no sense when you remember what happened in the film. Like, in the film, shaun robbed Mr. Sandhu’s shop with his gang, had a large fucker threaten him a machete and called him slurs several times but in this series they’re just chill and working together. I do quite like combo’s character development in this and god knows I love stephen graham but he was only in one episode so it felt very rushed, out-of-place and undeserved given what he did at the end of the film. I’d really like to know what the idea behind putting milky and lol together for no reason whatsoever just to add tension that never actually amounts to anything. I do actually quite like this series despite all my criticisms and I reckon if it weren’t associated with the film I would have liked it a lot more, and a lot of people say they preferred it on a rewatch so maybe I’ll have to do that one day but for now I don’t reckon this could live up to the film which was brilliant and beautiful and had a very important point which was well made.