The Gallows Pole

Hilarious, ribald and ridiculous but also achingly bleak and sad. This Is England ’86 is all these things but, more than anything, what it has in spades is humanity.

The 2010 Channel 4 drama features a gang of largely unemployed misfits in an unnamed, impoverished East Midlands coastal town, following England’s progress at Maradona’s “Hand of God” World Cup in Mexico.

The gang comes in all ages, shapes and sizes, sporting the worst 1980s haircuts. There’s no fake tan, fancy nails or gym bodies on show, as you fear there would be in a contemporary version.

White House Plumbers

Tuesday

Sky Atlantic, 9.00pm

Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux star in this 1970s satirical comedy drama. The pair make up the White House Plumbers, Richard Nixon’s political saboteurs tasked with “preventing leaks” and defending his administration.

Based on the book of the same name by Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole tells the true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners, the 18th Century fraud gang who constructed the biggest counterfeit operation in British History.

The drama follows the gang of weavers and land workers who began to forge coins in order to keep their West Yorkshire community afloat, albeit capsizing the economy in the process.