This is England '88, set over three days at Christmas, begins starkly with three awakenings. Lol (Vicky McClure), her chirpy platinum-blonde hair from '86 now a fierce Chrissie Hynde black, looks haggard and unhappy at being woken by a toddler whose appearance indicates that Lol's affair with Milky in '86 has had consequences beyond their mutual betrayal of Woody. An alarm clock wakes Woody (Joseph Gilgun). We last saw him at the end of '86 arranging a surprise wedding for Lol while she was battering her father to death with a hammer. Now he leaps out of the bed he is sharing with a buxom gingery blonde. Like Lol, he looks ten rather than two years older. His Paul Weller Mod haircut of 1986 is changed to a severe middle-aged neatness reminiscent of Bryan Pringle's cuckolded husband in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Finally, to Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), who is lying in a close embrace with Smell (Rosamund Hanson), her elaborate hair moulded into an elfin bowl cut. He is no longer a child, but he sulkily resists her playful sexual demands.