Boss of new BBC show shares "advantage" of Peaky Blinders connection

This Town director Paul Whittington has spoken about the "advantage" of working with Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight.

The six-part drama series was filmed at Knight's own Digbeth Loc Film and TV Studios in Birmingham, with Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery and Peaky Blinders' Jordan Bolger in lead roles.

This Town takes place in Birmingham's 1980s music scene, setting the formation of a groundbreaking band against violence and bloodshed in the area.

Speaking to Digital Spy about the series, Whittington explained that Steven Knight's involvement immediately gave the project a bigger scale.

Related: Peaky Blinders' boss Steven Knight set for another Birmingham-based BBC drama

"Birmingham offers a lot in terms of those kind of estates that are there that you can go into and they were actually very welcoming to us," the filmmaker said. "I mean, if you say that you're working with a guy who created Peaky Blinders, then a lot of doors open. So that was a definite advantage. The Brummies are rightly very proud of that show."

Whittington went on: "So we were going onto estates, and I mean, some of them haven't changed a lot in 40 years, is the reality of it. And the truth is that other than satellite dishes, that you can remove digitally later on, they're very, very much as they were back in the 80s.

"But as I say, we were welcomed into those places. And we wanted something that was kind of expansive and beautiful as well, that actually, the sun shines on these places. And we found an area called Druids Heath in Birmingham, which is our Birmingham location, which is a sort of sprawling estate with green spaces and woodland. And then something in Coventry that we wanted to be a little bit more insular, a little bit more inward looking."

The director continued: "We have that incredible estate, which has a large tower in the centre of it and four low rise blocks around each side of it, which felt like a fortress. So we have these two very distinctive, different locations from Birmingham and Coventry."

This Town will premiere on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer on Sunday (March 31).

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