Back in the very late ’70s and early ’80s, the Ska music scene in the U.K. was booming, and its impact is still felt on the music scene around the world. The music itself is described as a combination of Jamaican Ska and Reggae with Punk and New Wave.
The key record label in its development was 2 Tone, which initially included the greats of the scene like The Specials, The Beat, The Selecter, and Madness. Now, the original scene will be covered by a TV series that is being developed by Steven Knight, the creator of the popular crime series Peaky Blinders.
The producers of the series will be Kudos, who released Tin Star and The Tunnel, while one of the co-producers will be Matthew James Wilkinson who was behind the recent Beatles-inspired feature Yesterday.
According to Deadline, the series will “use the music of 2 Tone as its heartbeat to tell the story of how the scene exploded out of Coventry and Birmingham helping to unify black, white, and Asian youth groups amid racism and political injustice.”
According to Knight, “[i]t was a soundtrack that perfectly fit the mood of the times, on the streets, in clubs and on the football terraces. Birmingham and Coventry were the places where 2 Tone was born and we will chart its progress through the important years.”
