"When I started on This Is England ‘86 the main worry was TV spin-offs that had happened before. I couldn't think of one that’s worked. Without naming names, when I looked at the ones that had happened, the original creative team, the nucleus that made something great, tend not to have had a hand in it – they either pass it off or put themselves in as an exec. I said from the beginning that if I’m going to do This Is England for TV, I’m not going to disrespect the characters by saying, 'These people I knew, you have ‘em.' It was always about my life and the people I grew up with, so I’m going to at least write it and I want to direct as well. In fact, there was potential that I may have directed the whole series [Meadows directs two episodes, The Scouting Book For Boys' Tom Harper the other two]. But there had to be a new angle, a new story..."