The Wirral, 1979, the early days of Thatcherism. Carty is a young man with a steady office job, looking for an escape from his dreary life.
He strikes up a friendship with local face Elvis, and quickly finds his release in the music clubs of Liverpool, and, especially, with a gang of others who follow the local football team, home and away.
Wedge haircuts, Adidas trainers, Peter Storm cagoules, Echo and the Bunnymen – pretty soon, he’s into it all, the look, sounds, language and violence of the emerging casual scene.
More Quadrophenia than Football Factory, Awaydays is a faithful adaptation of Kevin Sampson’s seminal book about the particular subculture that gathered around football at the end of the 1970s.
Authentic in all its details, even looking and sounding like a film of the late 1970s, this is that rare thing, a convincing and entertaining film drawing on an often overlooked aspect of British urban life.