The bandwagon has already rolled through This Town so me jumping on and declaring it great makes me about three weeks’ late on the TV recommendation front.

However, the joy of streaming is you can start your journey whenever it suits.

I’m not a Peaky Blinders devotee – I saw the first season and lost interest after that – so it was less the name Steven Knight that got me excited about BBC drama This Town than the subject matter and era.

Levi Brown plays duffle-coated dreamer Dante Williams in This Town. Picture: Robert Viglasky/BBC

I loved The Specials and the drama’s title draws on a lyric from their biggest hit, Ghost Town. For those around at the time, it transports you back to 1981 and the urban unrest and deprivation of the early Thatcher years the song evokes so beautifully.

The slow burn drama is essentially a family story of two brothers and their dad. The lead character is Dante Williams, played by Levi Brown, a dreamer and would-be poet who is as much an observer as a participant of life on his Birmingham estate. His brother Gregory (Jordan Bolger), is a charismatic, soulful, yet hard-as-nails soldier on the streets of Belfast. Their father Deuce (Nicholas Pinnock) is desperate to keep Dante off the streets.

Dante and Gregory’s cousin Bardon Quinn (Ben Rose) comes from a staunchly Republican Irish family and he is trying to avoid getting involved in his father's activities in the IRA.

It’s probably best not to go much further on the plot, other than the creation of a band becomes a dream as local gangs, crime bosses and Special Branch all try to pull the characters in different directions.

Alongside this is a fantastic soundtrack, which can be distracting as you can find yourself unconsciously trying to identify which Toots & The Maytals song it is. I have them all on a playlist now and as well as tracks by Coventry and Birmingham bands you might expect such as The Specials, UB40 and The Selecter, there are snippets of songs across the six episodes by Desmond Dekker, Bob Marley and Prince Buster to Blondie, Tubeway Army and Siouxsie and the Banshees. There’s even some Stiff Little Fingers, Tom Jones and Leonard Cohen on there.

So if you haven’t already, give This Town a go.

Will Slater is a sub editor at The Scotsman

Passions: This Town is a wonderful drama with a soundtrack to sigh for