Everything we know about Steven Knight's new BBC series being filmed around the Black Country
Here's what we know about the new series being filmed around the Black Country from creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight.
This Town – which has been filming around the Black Country in Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, and Walsall – tells the story of an extended family and four young people who are drawn to the music genre.
The new BBC programme – This Town – tells the story of an extended family and four young people who are drawn into the world of ska and two-tone music, which exploded from the grassroots of Coventry and Birmingham in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, uniting black, white and Asian youths.
The six-part show will feature the youngsters "fighting to choose their own paths in life, and each in need of the second chance that music offers" them.
Photos taken by the Express & Star showed the crew packing up after filming over a weekend in January, which saw actors dressed in old firefighter uniforms tackling what passersby called a 'controlled blaze'.
A casting call was then put out for skinheads and people with shaved heads to star in the six-part series, with people needing availability until the end of February.
Scenes were being filmed for at the Coach and Horses pub in West Bromwich which was turned into "The Happy Trooper".
Then earlier this week, actors, crews and set hands were seen descending into the disused Old Dirty Duck pub on Upper Bridge Street, Walsall.
This was the third time filming has taken place in the Black Country - with the first scenes shot in Wolverhampton city centre before heading to West Bromwich.
Steven Knight, writer, creator and executive producer of This Town who grew up in Walsall, said: "This is a project very close to my heart. It’s about an era I lived through and know well and it involves characters who I feel I grew up with. It’s a love letter to Birmingham and Coventry but I hope people from all over the world will relate to it."
Michelle Dockery, from Downton Abbey, Nicolas Pinnock from Life, David Dawson from My Policeman, will be among the cast of the major drama series – alongside an "exciting cast of rising talent".
Jo McClellan, BBC Drama commissioning editor, says: “Steven’s scripts are absolutely brilliant – they capture the wild energy of youth and a pivotal moment in time, all set to a fantastic soundtrack, and we can’t wait to see this incredibly talented cast bring it all to life.”
The six-part series is produced by Kudos (a Banijay UK company) and Nebulastar for the BBC, co-produced with Mercury Studios, in association with Kudos North, Stigma Films and Nick Angel. Filming is now underway in the region, and at Steven Knight’s new Digbeth Loc. Film and TV Studios.
