Northern Soul

Ee, it were tough oop north in t’70s. Get up at crack o’ dawn, work a ten-hour shift down t’fact’ry and all we ’ad to look forward to were massive ’andfuls of amphetamines and night on t’dancefloor at Wigan Casino, ravin’ us tits off to obscure American soul belters.

Give ‘Northern Soul’ its due: this feisty, frequently amusing chronicle of one young man’s journey through the dancehalls of Lancashire nails its time and place, and puts some recent, similarly themed pretenders – we’re looking at you, ‘Spike Island’ – to shame. Elliot James Langridge (‘Hollyoaks’) is perfectly cast as John, the teenage outcast who finds a home among the speed-freaks, showboaters and vinyl nerds of the Northern Soul scene.

A pity, then, that the story is so tiresomely familiar. We know the drugs are going to get out of hand, we know John’s firebrand best mate Matt (Josh Whitehouse) will go off the rails, and we know there’ll be at least one cathartic scenester death. Still, perhaps this is appropriate given that the Northern Soul scene was all about recycling the oldies.