MovieChat Forums > This Is England '90 (2015) Discussion > Overall a fairly weak series I thought.

Overall a fairly weak series I thought.

posted 9 years ago by scott-hillier
5 replies | jump to latest

I liked there was closure at the end for most the characters, nice to see Woody end with the happiness he deserved.

Meadows was definitely stroking his own ego by pairing Shaun up with a hot chick, there's no way Shaun would've got anyone that hot.

I thought the Combo situation was handelled well. Some good writing that his past ways caught up with him despite becoming a changed man.

But the rest of the series - really weak.

Those awful 2 comedic characters were way over the top, instead of being funny in a more realistic fashion.
No rave stuff.
Nothing around the world cup.
No real development of any of the characters.

I thought Michael Socha was the star of the series this time around, but the whole thing definitely left me really unsatisfied.

Hope Meadows pulls a great movie out of the bag next as he really could do with one.

[–] Howlin Wolf 9 years ago

Maybe if you were after historical context, then it was lacking - but for character drama, I thought it second to none.

The Combo/Milky and Kelly/Lol storylines were really all it needed to make compelling drama, and I thought those were done really well... Yeah, the stuff around it was filler... but why care about that, when the meat is as juicy as it was?

The characters mentioned were developed well enough.

I don't know - I think you're being unnecessarily harsh... but, you're entitled to your opinion.



"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

[–] matthewilli81 9 years ago

The ending was as happy as Meadows would get surely. I didnt care for the Kelly storyline too much, the drug habit just felt wedged in to have the feel-good ending. Tremendous acting though. Superb.

Shaun and his girlfriend was a little silly, too good looking sorry!

The combo conclusion was horrific, I feel that we were cheated of screen time in the cafe between Milk and Combo though. It was over too quick and I can only assume Stephen Graham's time was hard to secure? He is without doubt one of the best British actors about and his portrayal of the character is simply incredible! Combo's fate whilst providing gut wrenching drama, was maybe too close to a Wire/Sopranos scenarios than TIE.

The first episode felt slow and I would have liked a lot of that time to have been given to episode 4 where it felt a LOT of stuff was crammed into the 1hr 40mins.

As a series I'd have it above 88 but below 86.

A solid 8/10.

[–] worldofsnail 9 years ago

Spot on. Dull and drawn out. Made the wedding scene in The Deer Hunter look like Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The slo-mo scenes and the perpetually soporific piano playing took tedium to Wagnerian extremes. 5/10. I would have given less but for Gilgun and Graham. 4+ hours that could have been reined into 2.

[–] BeOneOfUs 9 years ago

It wasn't a "weak series" at all! It just didn't go how you wanted it to go.

[–] beatpoet84 9 years ago

The first two episodes were boring as hell, but the second two pretty good. I've only really been impressed with '88 as a series in its entirety, though everything with Lol in '86 is pretty gripping.