Watch: We meet Steven Knight and the cast of his new BBC drama This Town at red carpet premiere

The premiere for Steven Knight's new BBC One drama This Town was held in Birmingham this evening (March 19).

Birmingham World went along to the event at Birmingham Town Hall on Tuesday to speak with the cast of the show, as well as Knight about what audiences can expect when the six-part series hits television screens on Sunday, March 31.

This Town, written by Peaky Blinders creator Knight, is described as a family drama and is based on “an extended family and four young people who are drawn into the world of ska and two-tone music which exploded from the grass roots of Coventry and Birmingham in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, uniting black, white and Asian youth.

This Town opens in 1981 at a moment of huge social tensions and unrest. It’s a thriller and family saga against this backdrop. It will tell the story of a group of young people fighting to choose their own paths in life, and each in need of the second chance that music offers.

Sign up for our free newsletters now

Steven talked to us on the red carpet this evening about where the inspiration for the new show came from. He said: "I wanted to do a story set in Birmingham and Coventry. There's plenty of stories to choose from over the past 200 or so years, but this thing I remember myself from the early 80s is something I think is very relevant to today, where we're living in a time where people are deciding to be separate a lot and deciding to find differences.

"This is about a group of people in estates in Birmingham and Coventry, when these records were arriving from Jamaica and people in Coventry and Birmingham liked them and were dancing to them, and they happened to be black and white. The idea is if you take away the external pressures, people will be alright and get on."

Speaking to BirminghamWorld on the red carpet this evening, Levi Brown, who stars in the lead role as Dante Williams, said: "What drew me to the part is the complex character - it's a role you really dream of as an actor because he has so many different things going on, and when you start to go down one road with him you get taken in a completely direction and I think as an actor that's a very exciting position to be in."

You can watch the interviews in full above