Meet the cast of new BBC drama This Town on the red carpet at Birmingham premiere
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00:00 I wanted to do a story set in Birmingham and Coventry.
00:04 There's plenty of stories to choose from, you know, over the past 200 years, whatever.
00:10 But this thing that I remember myself in the 80s, early 80s, was something that I think
00:16 is very relevant to today, where we're living in a time where people are deciding to be
00:22 separate a lot, I think, and deciding to find differences.
00:26 And this was a group of people on housing estates in Coventry and Birmingham, who, these
00:32 records were arriving from Jamaica, and they liked them, and they started being in the
00:38 same place and dancing to them, and they happened to be black and white.
00:41 And what I've tried not to do in the whole thing is remark upon it or talk about it or
00:45 say this is the issue, because it's not.
00:48 The idea is that if you take away the external pressures, people will be alright, they'll
00:54 get on.
00:55 That's my theory.
00:57 And obviously, the Scar scene is there.
01:00 So many scenes of the Manchester scene, Liverpool, the Beatles, there's been a lot of films,
01:05 TV on, but we haven't had too much of the Birmingham music scene.
01:08 No, no, no.
01:09 So, Scar was such a big thing in Birmingham.
01:11 How enjoyable was it for you to go back and teach Arvind Dalby and sort those out?
01:15 It's fantastic.
01:16 I mean, you know, Birmingham also invented metal, which is huge all over the world.
01:21 So you could do a story about metal.
01:23 You could do a story about Sabbath and Iommi and Led Zeppelin.
01:27 This place has always been a crucible for creative invention, and music has been one
01:33 of the main things.
01:35 I think it's a really good first episode.
01:38 I think it'll, hopefully it'll leave people wanting more.
01:42 And yeah, you've got a lovely introduction to all characters, and yeah, I think it's
01:47 going to be smashing.
01:48 I think people are going to really enjoy it.
01:51 What drew me to the part was just how complex it was as a character.
01:54 I think it's a role that you kind of dream of as an actor because he's neither here
01:58 nor there, and he's got so many different things going on.
02:02 And like, when you start to go down one road with him, you get taken in a completely different
02:08 direction, and I think as an actor that's like, it's a very exciting position to be
02:12 in.
02:13 So yeah.
02:14 I play the character of Jeannie Keefe.
02:16 She befriends Dante in our first episode.
02:20 What drew me to it is she is a feisty, fierce woman that is not to be reckoned with, and
02:26 I don't think we see enough of those on screen, but Stephen writes them beautifully, and it
02:30 was a joy to play her.
02:32 I play Stephen's work and the story in general, but when I found out about the character,
02:41 it was just her, she's amazing.
02:43 I'm so excited for people to see her.
02:46 She's unique, she's strong, she packs a punch.
02:50 I don't know, I can't say too much, but just the excitement that I felt when watching her.
02:55 I'd never read a script where the character came out of the page so strongly as she did.
03:05 For me, there are so many brilliant stuff, and the lyrics are so great, a lot of the
03:10 Scar stuff.
03:11 As a writer, it's so direct and powerful, and often it's about really bad times, but
03:21 it's upbeat.
03:22 It's sort of happy.