IN THE FINAL EPISODE OF SHANE MEADOWS’S This is England ’88 there is an astonishing scene, so beautiful, so moving, so theologically sophisticated that I can scarcely believe it actually appeared on British TV.
Throughout the series Lol (short for Lorraine), played by Vicky McClure, is in the depths of suffering. (This article contains major spoilers, as the TV announcers say, “right from the start”.) Submerged in post-natal depression as she looks after her baby daughter, who was conceived during a catastrophic fling with her then-fiancé’s best friend, Lol is also haunted by horribly lifelike visions of her late father, who she killed with a hammer after he tried to rape her.
Perhaps it’s worth saying at this point that Shane Meadows’s subject-matter tends to be fairly heavy. Meadows believes there is more darkness around than people like to admit. One of his teenage friends in Uttoxeter was persecuted by a gang who got him addicted to drugs and bullied him into suicide. And, shockingly to Meadows, the town just forgot about it: ten years on, the whole episode was never referred to.
So in 2004, a riveting masterpiece I never want to see again in my life. The actor playing the gang leader, Gary Stretch, found it a harrowing experience and told Meadows he was struggling to inhabit such a monster. As Stretch recalled recently for a making-of story, the director told him: “You know, Gary, if you’re gonna be bad, be really fucking bad.” That is a fair summary of Meadows’s artistic approach — though it misses out the really crucial bit. Meadows does not portray evil for its own sake. He portrays it because, unless you have understood how much wickedness there is in the world, how can you understand what it means for Jesus Christ to enter into it?
