Another two years have passed for our troubled youths, and they’ve reached the age of rave and Madchester – but conflict is clearly never far away

We first met the This Is England characters when they were kids in 1983, as they stumbled through the minefields of race, sex and youth in the Midlands – and we have since caught up with them, almost 7 Up style, every few years since.

Shane Meadows’s film begat TV spinoffs set in 1986 and 1988, charting how friends Woody, Lol, Shaun, Smell and the rest grew up and faced sometimes horrendous trauma. Now we’ve reached 1990; the era of acid house and Madchester has caught up with them, but they’re clearly not just getting off their faces in a field somewhere. Here’s the exclusive first glimpse of This Is England ’90.

“Don’t worry guys, the good times will come again,” Milky says – but, this being Meadows, you get the sense that there’ll be a lot of anguish before they eventually get here. Get reacquainted when it airs in September.