SKA wars

Troubled young people escape into two-tone music against a backdrop of violence in a 1980s-set drama

NEW DRAMA This Town Easter Sunday & Easter Monday, 9pm, BBC1 (box set, BBC iPlayer)

Coventry band The Specials topped the UK singles charts in 1981 with Ghost Town, a song about alienated youth and urban decay.

Now, screenwriter Steven Knight, who grew up in the Midlands, is revisiting early 1980s Coventry and Birmingham in This Town, a six-part drama about troubled youngsters who form a band as part of the burgeoning ska scene, against a backdrop of social unrest.

"This is the area where I grew up, explains Knight, whose acclaimed Birmingham-set crime drama Peaky Blinders starred Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy. 'There was this period in Coventry and Birmingham when people who were opposites came together, and I thought it would be interesting to tell this story.

The cast boasts a mix of up-and-coming actors alongside established names, including Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery as alcoholic mother Estella, The Last Kingdom's David Dawson as gangster Robbie Carmen, and stage and screen veteran Geraldine James as matriarch Marie.

UNREST