SKA wars

Troubled young people escape into two-tone music against a backdrop of violence in a 1980s-set drama

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NEW DRAMA This Town Easter Sunday & Easter Monday, 9pm, BBC1 (box set, BBC iPlayer)

Coventry band The Specials topped the UK singles charts in 1981 with Ghost Town, a song about alienated youth and urban decay.

Now, screenwriter Steven Knight, who grew up in the Midlands, is revisiting early 1980s Coventry and Birmingham in This Town, a six-part drama about troubled youngsters who form a band as part of the burgeoning ska scene, against a backdrop of social unrest.

"This is the area where I grew up, explains Knight, whose acclaimed Birmingham-set crime drama Peaky Blinders starred Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy. 'There was this period in Coventry and Birmingham when people who were opposites came together, and I thought it would be interesting to tell this story.