Based on Jonathan Coe's novel, adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, this tells of three school friends in 1974-77 Birmingham amidst the social and political whirl of the times, not to mention the shift from prog rock to punk. It's awfully familiar territory, e.g. brutish school teachers who used to throw things at you, pretentious prog rock groups.
Geoffrey Breton is the writer - his family: car plant exec Kevin Doyle, Rebecca Front, Alice O'Connell his devoted sister, brother Sebastian Harding. Nicholas Shaw is the one who goes from political into rock journalism; his parents are Elizabeth Berrington and Hugo Speer, who's having an affair with secretary Christine Tremarco. Then we have Rasmus Hardiker (from Lead Balloon), and his parents Mark Williams and Sarah Lancashire, who's being drawn into a relationship with pretentious art teacher Julian Rhind-Tutt. Cara Horgan is the female friend of the trio and Alice Eve makes an impression playing the elusive object of Breton's affection. Not sure there's a genuine Brummie in the cast. With Rafe Spall as a somewhat annoying (but curiously sidelined) school colleague, and Peter Bankolé as the black head boy. And Geoffrey Whitehead (headmaster), Pip Torrens, Christopher Fairbank, James Daffern. The violent and racist plant worker's story is also weirdly unfinished (played by Andrew Tiernan).
Tremarco has cute teeth, like a young Bowie, and Even Eve's aren't perfectly neat like modern teeth all have to be.
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| For the old bus fans amongst us |
Maw - jaws or throat of voracious animal.
It's a three-parter for BBC.
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