One of Britain’s finest directors brings his familiar breed of grit and working class charm to the nation’s capital

Curiously, whilst most people don’t relish such things as violence, social dysfunction and the abuse of hardcore drugs in their own lives, they seem quiet motivated to go to the cinema and watch films about them. Perhaps this desire to peer over the fence and observe the life of others is a distinctly British quality and if so, its citizens have no better opportunity for a helping of social voyeurism than they do with the films of Shane Meadows.

About Britain now, Meadows’ reputation as a gritty and talented director is assured. Testament to his success was the declaration by The Times of London that, ‘certainly Meadows bears comparison with (Ken) Loach.’ Not faint praise for the lad who started off life in the 1970s in the distinctly downtrodden Staffordshire market town of Uttoxeter.

Meadows forged his reputation with a succession of low-budget features that were released to a quiet flutter of critical excitement at around the turn of the millennium. Amongst them was A Room for Romeo Brass, where he revisits his childhood home, conjuring a thought provoking and gritty portrayal of the characters to be found there. In 2006 he suddenly struck it big, with the release of This is England, which that year won the Best Film category at the British Independent Film Awards.

Meadows’ latest film is Somers Town, which quibblers may say is a touch short at 72 minutes in length, but is heralded by the Edinburgh Festival as one of the top British films this year. In the same vein as many of Meadows’ films, the plot follows the experiences of two adolescent boys: there is Tommo, a runaway from the Midlands, and a Polish boy that he befriends named Marek.

Their unlikely partnership is cast into the unfamiliar territory of north London, running the streets that line the Euston Road around the great St Pancras Station. Shot with typical spontaneity, much of the dialogue is ad-libbed, keeping it fresh, witty and smooth, whilst Meadows’ mines the humour of the situation for all that it is worth.

It is not merely the characters the characters that are dragged out of their familiar environments, it is also the director. Propped up behind the lens for the first time in London, Meadows confessed to being frustrated by the bustle and noise of the Big Smoke: ‘If someone isn’t reversing up the road in a digger, it’s jumbo jets flying overhead. I’ve never known anything like it. How anything ever gets made in London I’ll never know,’ he said.

Somers Town is being tipped by the critics as one of the year’s finest feature films. It is currently under release across the United Kingdom.

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