An open let­ter to Shane Meadows

Dear Mr Meadows,

Like a reverse Alan Clarke or Ken Loach – two esteemed direc­tors appro­pri­ate­ly cit­ed as your fore­bears – you start­ed out in film but have arguably found a more accom­mo­dat­ing home for your Brit-grit visions in tele­vi­sion. Cer­tain­ly, you’ve become more of a house­hold name since you made the tran­si­tion – before then, the wider British pub­lic didn’t know who you were. Now, thanks in part to your This Is Eng­land TV series, you’re flirt­ing with becom­ing a British insti­tu­tion. And you know what, you’ve earned it.

The small screen pop­u­lar­i­ty is under­stand­able; your kitchen-sink soap opera is a cut above your aver­age ter­res­tri­al out­put. I ven­ture that those who have fol­lowed you from the begin­ning, how­ev­er, may greet the news that you might not be giv­ing up your reg­u­lar, back­wards-glanc­ing TV gig after the upcom­ing This Is Eng­land ​’90 with a sense of dis­ap­point­ment. Not because tele­vi­sion isn’t a good fit for you, but because – at a time when so many film­mak­ers are mak­ing the switch to the small screen – cin­e­ma is still absolute­ly your home.

It’s not just that you have a knack for bring­ing to atten­tion excit­ing new tal­ent (we have you to thank for dis­cov­er­ing Pad­dy Con­si­dine, Jack O’Connell, Vicky McClure and Toby Kebbell, of course) when you aren’t re-util­is­ing the same This Is Eng­land act­ing troupe, or that you work best with your per­form­ers in a medi­um as free and open to exper­i­men­ta­tion as film. Before you went on unof­fi­cial cin­e­mat­ic hia­tus back in 2009, you were mak­ing vital, on-the-pulse British films on a shoe­string. You were a mas­ter of mag­ick­ing end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing movies out of next-to-nothing.

Think of Somers Town, the urban com­ing-of-age fairy tale which grew out of a Eurostar-fund­ed short; or Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, the occa­sion­al­ly hys­ter­i­cal mock­u­men­tary you made with your old col­lege friend Pad­dy in a mere five days. And, of course, there’s This Is Eng­land itself. Each work car­ries with it the sense of you not being cre­ative­ly lim­it­ed by your con­straints, but lib­er­at­ed by them.

On tele­vi­sion, you’ve retained an edge, sure, but one could argue your work has been more sprawl­ing and indul­gent spread out over sev­er­al hours, not to men­tion – with all respect – aes­thet­i­cal­ly rel­a­tive­ly unad­ven­tur­ous. This Is Eng­land, in con­trast, is an arrest­ing col­lage of grainy sub­ur­ban-sea­side imagery and faces in close-up, while the mono­chro­mat­ic Somers Town fea­tures some of your most strik­ing com­po­si­tions. Your next project chrono­log­i­cal­ly, mean­while, is sig­nif­i­cant for two very dif­fer­ent rea­sons: Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee is both your last fic­tion fea­ture to date, and the last project in which you real­ly addressed con­tem­po­rary sociopo­lit­i­cal concerns.

Since Le Donk, your sto­ry of a failed musi­cian briefly escap­ing sub­ur­ban drudgery for a chance at 15 min­utes of fame, you have cho­sen to remain almost exclu­sive­ly in the past. All your projects post-’09 have been nos­tal­gia trips back to the’80s and’90s, be it in three sea­sons of This Is Eng­land or your phe­nom­e­nal Stone Ros­es doc­u­men­tary, Made of Stone. You haven’t lost your vital human­ist touch, but not since the last decade – before the effects of the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis – have you – tru­ly addressed the state of things.

Britain 2015, with its work­ing poor, its demonised ​‘oth­er’ and its crip­pling wealth cuts, is cur­rent­ly lack­ing a com­pas­sion­ate voice like yours. While you’ve remained in the bub­ble of your TV show, your for­mer con­cerns have only become more rel­e­vant: the work­ing-class strug­gle has inten­si­fied, the plight of the UK’s home­less and migrant con­tin­gent as seen in Somers Town has wors­ened, and polit­i­cal­ly, the nation is per­haps more frag­ment­ed than ever.

On film, you some­how always man­age to hit hard­er; and with Clarke and Loach long gone and wind­ing down respec­tive­ly, you’re the best can­di­date to inher­it the man­tle of British cinema’s work­ing-class champion.