Meadows to produce first TV drama

Bafta winner Meadows wrote the screenplay for This Is England

Award-winning film director Shane Meadows is to make his first drama series for television.

The four-part serial is a sequel to his Bafta-winning movie This Is England and will be screened on Channel 4.

We Were Faces picks up the lives of a gang of skinheads - including a young boy played by Thomas Turgoose - four years after the 1983-set original.

The drama is being made as part of Channel 4's revamp which includes the decision to axe Big Brother next year.

'Wealth of material'

Thomas Turgoose, the young actor who starred in This Is England, will reprise his role as Shaun, who has left school and is still involved with the gang.

Meadows said he had "a wealth of material and unused ideas" after he had finished the film, which he also wrote.

"I was very keen to take it further - audiences seemed to really respond to the characters we created, and out of my long-standing relationship with Film 4 and Channel 4 the idea for a television serial developed."

"Whereas the film told part of the story, the TV serial will tell the rest," added the film-maker.

This Is England won best British film at the 2008 Bafta Awards and a special jury prize at the inaugural Rome Film Festival two years earlier.

Turgoose was named most promising newcomer at the British Independent Film awards for his performance.

Meadows's subsequent film, Somers Town, won the main prize at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year.