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This Is England '86 Episode 1
Season 2, Episode 1
Tie86-episode1
Air date 7 September 2010
Written by Shane Meadows
Directed by Tom Harper
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"This Is England '86 Episode 2"

"Episode 1" is the first episode of This Is England '86 and the first television episode of This Is England overall.

Woody and Lol's wedding ends disastrously by Woody's reluctance to marry Lol, and Meggy suffers a near-fatal heart attack in the toilets of the register office. After Shaun sits his final exam in History, he gets into trouble with Flip and his gang of moped riding Casuals.

Plot[]

In the prologue, Combo and 13-year-old Shaun sit alone in Combo's blood-stained car, having just rushed Milky to the hospital (after Combo snapped and beat him into unconsciousness in the original film). Following a moment of silence, Shaun bids Combo farewell and leaves.

Going forward three years, Woody and Lol's wedding ends disastrously by Woody's reluctance to marry Lol, and Meggy suffers a near-fatal heart attack in the toilets of the licensed private wedding venue. After Shaun sits his final exam in history, he gets hassled by Flip (Perry Fitzpatrick) and his gang of moped-riding casuals. Flip orders Shaun to help him stage Flip defending his crush Gemma from a staged insult from Shaun. Gemma sees through this act and Flip, in his anger, assaults Shaun, leaving him bloodied. He is found by Lol's mother and taken to the same hospital as Meggy, where he reunites with Smell, but does not join the rest of the gang in Meggy's room. After urging from his mother, Shaun later gets a job working in a video rentals shop owned by Mr. Sandhu, the Indian shopkeeper with whom Shaun had a feud in the first film but is now close friends with both Shaun and his mother.

Now that three years have passed, Shaun has become the clichéd underachiever. Lacking the smarts to finish high school with any aplomb or the physicality to impress his peers, his only virtue seems to be that same quaint chivalry that won Smell's heart all those years ago and even this only serves to get him in trouble with the slapstick local scooter ‘gang'. Interestingly, when his path happens to cross with Gadge and another familiar face (the pair fresh from stealing a wreath from the graveyard), he deliberately ducks them and watches as his one time friends pass him by.

When the two catch-up with the rest of the gang, we see the flowers have been procured for Lol and Woody's imminent wedding, and they all travel to a modest community centre on the top of a double-decker bus. During the service, family members who are supposed to attend don't, while parents who weren't do, and just as Woody falters on that all important ‘I do', a member of the congregation, Meggy, collapses with a heart attack and they all rush to the hospital, coincidentally, just as Shaun too finds himself in need of medical attention after a disagreement with the bullying leader of the scooter gang.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Stars[]

  • Georgie Foote as Gemma
  • Gwen Park as nurse
  • Kate Wood as registrar
  • Lorna Gayle as Bimpe
  • Rebecca Manley as Barbara
  • Steve Brody as Richard
  • Thomas Arnold as doctor
  • Yvonn Crann as woman at job centre
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