"There's loads to do in Stevenage...if you like concrete" "I fucking hate this town" Stevenage. No offence to anyone who hails from there, but it really is a shithole. I can just about say this, as I used to go out with a girl from there and visited its grim concrete desolation row regularly. It's telling that the two most famous films made in Stevenage, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush and this, chart the decline from optimism to pessimism of these government sponsored urban landscapes that were built upon the rural and undeveloped areas of our land in the postwar period to help accommodate the 'overspill' from deprived inner city areas. In the earlier film the mood is bright and breezy for our young freewheeling protagonists, but by the time we reach the 1990s of Boston Kickout, the youth on display are emphatically disillusioned. The film, from writer/director Paul Hills, is a semi-autobiographical tale about his own experiences growing up in the town.
Phil (John Simm) moved from London to Stevenage as a child with his father (Derek Martin) in the 1980s shortly after witnessing his mother's suicide. Now it is 1991 and Phil and his friends, Ted (Andrew Lincoln), Matt (Nathan Valente) and Steve (Richard Hanson), have just left school and are caught in that limbo period of the 'final' summer; waiting for the exam results that will shape their adult lives. Ted, effortlessly cool, is keen to break out of the stifling atmosphere of his hometown and promptly disappears in dramatic fashion on that first night of freedom - perhaps because he knows that if you stick around any longer you'll end up like Steve's older brother, Robert (a scene-stealing Marc Warren), a wild skinhead who revels in his small town legend; "I've been thrown out of every club in Stevenage!" he gleefully proclaims after the bouncers chuck him into the street for glassing someone. "There's only two!" Phil points out, but it does little to deflate his sense of achievement.
Caught between these two extremes is Phil and Simm's performance of understated charm serves as the perfect balance. Feeling somewhat lost without the routine of school and with his best mate Ted AWOL, Phil drifts through a dead-end summer job at a bakery whilst indulging in his pastime of photography, not really knowing what he wants to do with his life, or what he wants from it. The developments of his friends - Matt gets engaged and Steve's behaviour becomes increasingly strange - provides him with some surprising distractions, but he only gets something of his own when his Shona, his outgoing Irish cousin (Emer McCourt) visits, leading to romance. This too however, proves to be a momentary distraction and, when his father attempts suicide, Phil must ultimately make a decision to either accept his lot and become absorbed by his peers and the culture around him, or break out and seek to achieve his potential.
Boson Kickout is a sadly overlooked film, perhaps because it was quickly lost in the wave of more successful and better remembered films such as Trainspotting and Human Traffic, which also starred Simm, an effective poster boy for the Britpop 90s, and featured some of the same production team, including a producer credit Emer McCourt. It's a shame, because I think overall BostonKickout is a more contemplative and mature offering than the enjoyably cartoonish antics of Human Traffic, with themes that are perhaps less dated, and is certainly better than the Trainspotting wannabes that followed in its wake. It's easy to see why Simm, Lincoln and Warren went on to bigger and better things, but sadly Valente and Hanson did not, and their somewhat anonymous performances perhaps tell that tale.
I'd recommend the film for anyone who grew up or came of age in the 1990s, it's choice soundtrack (Oasis, The Stone Roses, Primal Scream etc) and the fashions (I was amused to see that Ted dressed exactly like I did in the '90s and the early '00s - I had exactly the same leather jacket and a fondness for obscure T-shirts, and given that I have short dark, wavy/curly hair just like Lincoln's, it was quite an out-of-body experience!) will certainly bring back memories, and if you lived in a new town or a dead end town, you'll appreciate that sense of being young and alive but being held back and a little scared of taking the leap. It's not perfect, but it is a funny and touching coming-of-age drama that I had a good time with.
Oh and the title? It refers to the game that Phil et al played as kids, jumping over the fences of neighbouring homes and trashing their gardens.
After watching Friday night's BBC4 documentary Boy George and Culture Club:Karma to Calamity, which depicts the band's most recent and disastrous, farcical reunion attempt, I decided to revisit the excellent biopic, Worried About The Boy, from BBC2's 80s season back in 2010.
The boy in question is young George O'Dowd, a boy from a working class Irish family who, with his penchant for cross dressing and showing off, almost inadvertently helped shape the New Romantic fashion movement of the early 1980s before taking the pop world by storm with his band Culture Club, and the film explores these early days up until the band's disintegration.
It's a big role for any actor, but Douglas Booth steps up to the plate ably, delivering a veritable tour de force that befits such a larger than life character full of flair, caustic wit and ambiguous sex appeal. Quite rightfully, it's a performance that secured much plaudits and marked Booth immediately down as 'one to watch'.
Naturally the film explores the curious, complex and difficult relationships George shared in his private life at this time, including his sexual affairs with two ostensibly straight contemporaries; Theatre of Hate and Spear of Destiny's Kirk Brandon (when this affair was subsequently recorded in Boy George's autobiography, Brandon attempted to prove him a liar and fantasist in court and that his version of events could greatly hinder Brandon's career, with people believing him to be ''a peroxide poof'' - a somewhat homophobic bid which ultimately failed) played by future Game of Thrones star Richard Madden, and most crucially his affair with Culture Club's drummer Jon Moss; an affair which continues to create ripples to this very day.
Gavin and Stacey's Mathew Horne delivers an accomplished performance as Moss, a down to earth professional musician who is ultimately bewitched by the wholly original, unique George, leading to an ill fated, hesitant, stormy and somewhat adolescent crush-like love affair. It's such a shame that Horne's more unshowy, subtle career has been largely eclipsed by the arrogant posturing of his Gavin and Stacey co-star and show creator the noxious James Corden as, from his straight roles (no pun intended by the way!), Horne shows much promise.
But it's not just George's sexual relationships that take centre stage and there's a touching and tender exploration of the relationship with his somewhat bewildered but in no doubt devoted father played by Irish actor Francis Magee (it's worth pointing out that, in real life, George's father did not have the Irish brogue) It's perhaps this relationship that gives the production a satisfying and surprising sensitivity and depth, living up to its title and telling us a heartfelt story of fathers and sons.
There's also some gems in the cast including Mark Gatiss as punk Svengali Malcolm McLaren, all bubble perm and high pitched intonations, Freddie Fox as Marilyn and a scene stealing tongue in cheek Marc Warren as Steve Strange, who sadly died last month, strutting across his domain, The Blitz Club.
The Vice, a police drama about the Met's Vice Unit was one of my favourite programmes back when it aired for five series on ITV between 1999 and 2003, so naturally I'm really pleased to see ITV3 repeating at 11pm weeknights.
A dark and gritty series it focuses on crimes such as prostitution and paedophilia being investigated by the dogged and haunted DI Pat Chappel played by the magnificent Ken Stott, an actor who seemed to specialise in dour detectives around this time with subsequent roles in Messiah and Rebus too. Unable to draw the line between his work and home life he would increasingly demand both the loyalty and the frustrations of his equally dedicated colleagues played by Caroline Catz (fresh from the BBC comedy Preston Front and with The Bill and Doc Martin around the corner) David Harewood (who recently starred in the critically acclaimed US drama Homeland) Marc Warren (who would go on to star in Hustle and Mad Dogs) and latterly Rosie Marcel (who went on to star in Holby City) and Tamzin Malleson (of Dangerfield, she would go on to star in Bodies,Teachers and most recently Midsomer Murders as well as becoming 'Mrs Keith Allen)
The theme to the series was the 1994/95 single Sour Times from Bristol based 'trip hop' band Portishead. It was a great partnership of song and series, its John Barry-esque chilly guitar chords capturing perfectly the gloomy and sinister mood of the seedy underbelly of London the series highlighted, and indeed I believe The Vice itself created a template for a new wave of British detective drama whose repercussions can still be felt to this day.
