Steven mentions about filming in Coventry and Birmingham, the music scene in the Midlands and the different areas that inspired and feature in This Town. Video courtesy of BBC.
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00:00 I wanted it to be about four people, the drama of their lives, the places they live.
00:04 They live in Birmingham and Coventry.
00:06 And I wanted to set it up to a situation where
00:11 actually all four of them have no choice but to get famous.
00:16 You walk away from every day, nothing much to make you stay.
00:19 Then bloody hell, you hear a bell ring across the wishing well.
00:24 And this is the dawn of the age of love.
00:28 [BELL RINGS]
00:30 [SCREAMS]
00:32 It's about a period of time that I knew well, the early '80s.
00:37 And it's about this city, which I know well, Birmingham, where I grew up.
00:42 So it's sort of a story of a group of people, four young people.
00:48 And the theme, or the sort of leitmotif of the whole thing, is the music.
00:54 This is what you are.
00:58 [MUSIC - THE BIRMINGHAM SONGS, "TUTONE"]
01:06 There is a style of music which really began in Coventry and migrated to Birmingham
01:13 that was called tutone, which came out of ska and out of reggae.
01:17 People who were sort of almost on opposite sides of a divide
01:23 came together to listen to the same sort of music.
01:26 And it was the music that caused that to happen.
01:29 And you can think of it as corny as you want.
01:31 It doesn't matter, because it's true.
01:33 There was this type of music that felt to be ours for a bit.
01:38 Not for long, but for a bit.
01:41 And as I say, for me, it was associated with football, with Small Heath.
01:45 And because of that, for me, this is the natural sort of successor to Peaky,
01:51 because it's the same area, it's the same socioeconomic group, if you like.
01:58 And again, what I didn't want to do was to say,
02:02 look at these poor people on the council estate. Isn't it awful?
02:05 It's not awful. It wasn't awful. I mean, it is in its own way.
02:08 But this is people enjoying life, glamorous lives in these places that--
02:14 my instruction always in Peaky and in this town is make this look beautiful,
02:18 because in a sense, it is.
02:20 It's our turn in terms of Birmingham and Coventry.
02:23 It's our turn as European cities to really bang the drum and tell our story.
02:30 And this is part of that process.
02:32 Places in Moseley, there's the Crown.
02:39 There was a place-- I'm not sure how long it survived,
02:41 but there's a place called Mother's in Erdington,
02:43 which I really want to recreate, because it was an incredible music venue.
02:48 There were always these places in Brougham where--
02:52 especially the metal boys used to congregate.
02:55 But then afterwards, everybody would meet,
02:57 and no matter what sort of music they were making,
02:59 they would all meet at the burger bar by the Crown and all those places.
03:03 I'm closer to heaven on floor 27, because I can see the M6.
03:07 And when the lifts are fixed, I'll go down on the ground, spin you around,
03:13 and we'll hitchhike to Brighton, where we'll no longer be frightened.
03:17 It's set in Chelmsley Wood Estate, which if you're from this area, you'll know.
03:23 It's a big, sprawling council estate.
03:26 A lot of the tower blocks that were there then have gone,
03:29 so we shot it in a place called Druids Heath, which is only down the road,
03:33 which did have-- I think they're now being demolished, the big blocks.
03:38 And what I wanted to do was to set this thing in those blocks
03:43 and also in an estate called Hillsides in Coventry.
03:46 The camera rolls and you see a shot of something where you think,
03:49 "That's bad. That's rough. That's a really sort of--
03:56 "not deprived then, but it's a lot of people cramped into a small space."
04:01 I'm not from Chelmsley Wood, but from somewhere similar.
04:04 So when you're a kid growing up, it's a playground. It's fun.
04:07 And that's what I wanted to reflect in the way we shot it
04:12 and the way that the characters are, and also the humor of it,
04:15 which is very Birmingham as well.
04:17 Try, try and try, try and try.
04:22 Barton, why don't you just get on with your job and shut the fuck up?
04:25 And why would I do that?
04:27 There used to be a pub called The Gate Hangs Well,
04:29 which is a great name for a pub, which is no longer there,
04:31 but we've recreated that.
04:33 And at the other end of the spectrum, there's the interior of Coventry Cathedral,
04:37 which is just beyond belief.
04:40 And we were lucky enough to get permission to shoot in there as well.
04:43 And the other main location, I suppose you'd call it, is the M6, believe it or not,
04:50 because that's the road that connects the two cities.
04:52 And the lead character is very obsessed with the M6, if you put it that way.
05:00 For me, Digbeth is a very special area, and also Small Heath.
05:06 My parents, as I've said many times, because of Peaky, grew up,
05:10 and most of my relatives grew up in Small Heath.
05:13 So it's somewhere that I've got a big connection with,
05:16 and being a Birmingham City supporter, every other Saturday during the season, I'll be here.
05:22 That expands then to Digbeth, which I think is one of the great areas of Britain in terms of culture.
05:29 I mean, it's rough and ready, but it's, in my opinion, beautiful like this.
05:34 And it's waiting to happen. It's happening already.
05:37 I think when HS2 arrives, there's going to be a big change in Birmingham.
05:42 I hope it won't lose its identity and character,
05:46 but it's this part of Broome that really I think of as my patch, if you like.
05:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]