Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution

Actor and comedian Alan Davies grew up in the 1980s, an era when it seemed everything from race relations to sexual politics, jobs and the economy - was going through a revolution.  And it was the conflicts of that decade that helped shape Alan - and shaped the Britain we live in today.   Packed with archive footage and home videos, this three-part series offers Alan's very personal history of the 1980s.  Starting as a rebellious teenager in suburban Essex, it tells the story of coming of age in Thatcher's Britain.

In the first film - The Rebel from Suburbia - Alan returns to his Essex roots to rediscover his rebellious schoolboy years.  The 80s was the decade when youth culture came into its own and Alan guides us through the heroes who defined that rite of passage for him. From brash Americans like tennis star John McEnroe and musicians like Paul Weller, whose raw energy sent shockwaves through suffocating suburbia. 

Against a backdrop of mass unemployment and inner city riots, Alan also revisits a Britain of race hatred and class tensions, mods, skinheads and random teenage violence.   Alan sets out to confront the leader of the local skinhead gang that terrorised his teenage years - but along the way, he also explores some uncomfortable truths about his own conduct as a teenager.  Casual racism was a fact of everyday life amongst Alan's school friends in the early 80s, and Alan was no exception.   Thirty years on, Davies sets out to track down those who shared or were on the receiving end of his behaviour.

The second episode, Which Side Are You On?, broadly coincides with Davies' years at university and exposes a country split by political debate and bitterly divided by Thatcher's battle against the miners.  He meets some major figures from that time: his past political nemesis and Thatcher's right-hand man, Norman Tebbit, Sir Ian Mckellen, who campaigned vigorously for gay rights and his political hero, Billy Bragg.  The final film, ‘Get Up, Stand Up, charts the end of the decade, its legacy and the beginning of Alan's maturity with a budding career in comedy.