Michelle Dockery is set to lead a new series from Peaky Blinders and SAS: Rogue Heroes creator Steven Knight. She’ll star in This Town for BBC with Nicholas Pinnock (Marcella) and David Dawson (My Policeman) in the lead roles.
This Town, which was formerly titled Two Tone, will be a six-part series that follows “an extended family and four young people who are drawn into the world of ska and two-tone music, which exploded from the grass roots of Coventry and Birmingham in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, uniting black, white and Asian youths.”
Starring in the roles of the four young leads are Levi Brown (Loss and Return), Jordan Bolger (The Woman King), Ben Rose (Line of Duty) and Eve Austin (You).
This Town will also feature Geraldine James (Anne with an E), Peter McDonald (The Batman), Freya Parks (The School of Good and Evil), Shyvonne Ahmmad (Annika), John Heffernan (Dracula), Stefan Asante-Boateng (Coronation Street), Séainín Brennan (The Fall), George Somner (Sex Education) and Brendan Gibson (Peaky Blinders).
“This is a project very close to my heart,” Knight said. “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.”
This Town will be directed by Paul Whittington (The Murders at White House Farm) and produced by Charlotte Surtees. The series will be produced by Kudos North and Nebulstar for the BBC with Universal Music Group’s Mercury Studios co-producing and providing the series’ music from Dan Carey and Kae Tempest. Stigma Films and Nick Angel are also producing.
Both a high octane thriller and a family saga, This Town opens in 1981 at a moment of huge social tensions and unrest. Against this backdrop, it tells the story of a group of young people fighting to choose their own paths in life, and each in need of the second chance that music offers.
Production on This Town has begun in Birmingham.
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