‘This is England’ will return for one last feature film.
The well-loved up series looked set to come to an end after the ‘This is England ’90’ hit screens last year but the director Shane Meadows has teased that he’s planning to reunite the original cast for the final time as he pens one last movie.
Speaking at the British Academy Television Awards last night (08.05.16), in which he scooped Best Mini Series for last year’s installment, the 43-year-old director said: "There is one ‘This Is England’ left. I’ve got one last idea for ‘This Is England’ but as a film that can be split as a hybrid – because it started in cinemas and ended up on TV – I would love to finish off with one feature-length episode people can watch in the cinema or on TV the same night.
However, the only problem he envisages is getting the original cast, which included Vicky McClure, Thomas Turgoose and Michael Socha, back together as they’ve all gone on to do "bigger and better things" since.
He explained: "The cast have all gone on to bigger, better things. All of them are doing incredible things, so that’s probably the hardest thing now – trying to get everyone back.
"But I know the desire is there from me and I’m sure the cast, all of us, don’t see this as a job, but as a summer holiday. So I’d imagine we’d get it back."
Meanwhile, hearts will no doubt break across the country as Shane has ruled out doing more TV episodes – which included ‘This Is England ’86’, This Is England ’88’ and ‘This Is England ’90’ – because he doesn’t want to risk losing the "quality" of the show by overdoing it.
He said: "It’s a mixture of not having enough stories to move on to telling four or five hours’ worth of stuff and also wanting to get back into a feature film format.
"If I wanted to make money, I could write ten episodes of ‘This Is England’ and make a lot of money for everyone, but maybe then the series would go down in quality."