Shane Meadows planning This Is England '88 special

The two-hour special will be set during Christmas 1988 and is set to be broadcast in December this year.

Shane Meadows’ TV series, This is England ‘86, revisited the characters from the movie This is England and won the South Bank award for best drama today.

The four-part series revisited Shaun, Woody, Lol and Milky three years after the events of the film and drew an average audience of 2.9m (15.5%) across the run.

The Christmas special will see Lol and Woody’s relationship under the spotlight, with the main characters returning.

It will be will be written and directed by Meadows with Jack Thorne as a co-writer. Mark Herbert and Warp Films will produce, with filming due to start in the spring.

Meadows said: “A bit like Al Pacino in Godfather III, just when I think my love affair with This is England is over, it pulls me back in”.

C4 head of drama Camilla Campbell commissioned the special and said: “This Is England ‘86 was the highest-rating original drama series launch ever seen on C4 and we’re beyond excited that Shane, Warp Films and the cast have agreed to return with this feature-length drama.   

“It is set to pull together a lot of story threads from ‘86, leaving the way clear for a new series of This Is England ‘90 which is currently in development.” 

Broadcast previously revealed that This is England would be returning to C4, set in 1990.

(This story was originally published by Broadcast.)