A teenager’s adventures in London
Somers Town
Tonight, London Live, 10pm This isn’t the follow-up to The Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeffrey’s hit record Summertime, but a 2008 film by acclaimed director Shane Meadows, who shifts from his usual Midlands backdrop to a part of London that featured in Dickens’ works.
The angle Meadows takes in this black-and-white drama is to whisk long-time collaborator Thomas Turgoose from Nottingham to a small portion of London near the Euston Road. There his character Tomo meets and strikes up a friendship with a Polish lad called Marek, after a gang welcomes him to London by duffing him up and nicking all his belongings.
While Marek is good enough to stash Tomo away in his flat, hiding his contraband houseguest from his drunken father, the pair also share a disruptive affinity for a local waitress, Maria.
Their joint interest in this beguiling young French girl makes their arrangements more cramped than a swift half during a sunny evening on the South Bank… The Halfway House
Tomorrow, London Live, 2pm One year after this Basil Deardendirected Second World War supernatural drama was released, the still-astonishing horror Dead of Night (a segment of which Dearden also helmed) strode into cinemas and locked this in a dark cellar. Dead of Night’s success has meant that this remains a little-seen entry in Ealing’s history.
Ten people end up at a small hotel and consider their lives, successes and failures, in a place they begin to grasp is more than a quaint lodging. This 1944 work doesn’t aim for a rousing conclusion either, and the ending has a twist that may still ruffle viewers. London Go
Tomorrow, London Live, noon Everyone’s CV has one job you wouldn’t credit would have formed part of their career and Salvador Lopez Lopez, general director of the Ballet Folklórico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez, has a cracker — he has twice been Mexico’s national charro cowboy champion.
Crack rider and lasso artist Lopez’s involvement with Mexico’s foremost dance troupe was all but inevitable as the group was founded by his grandmother Amalia Hernandez, who began training him when he was two. The company starts performing at the London Coliseum on July 22, 42 years to the day since its last UK showing.