Once Upon a Time in the Midlands

Set in Nottinghamshire, Dek (Rhys Ifans) proposes to his girlfriend Shirley (Shirley Henderson) on TV. When Jimmy (Robert Carlyle), "the great love of her life" and father of her daughter Marlene (Finn Atkins), sees this, he returns in an attempt to win back her heart. However, after deserting his friends in Scotland during an unsuccessful robbery of some clowns, his friends turn against him and come to the Midlands to try to track him down. In the end, Shirley refuses to go with Jimmy and professes her love for Dek; likewise, Marlene refuses to have anything to do with Jimmy, and accepts Dek as her father figure.

• Robert Carlyle – Jimmy, Carol's foster brother, Shirley's ex-husband and Marlene's father
• Vanessa Feltz – Herself
• Ricky Tomlinson – Charlie, Carol's estranged husband
• Kathy Burke – Carol, Jimmy's foster sister
• Vicki Patterson – Audience Guest
• Shirley Henderson – Shirley, Jimmy's ex-wife and Marlene's mother
• Finn Atkins – Marlene, Jimmy and Shirley's daughter
• Kelly Thresher – Donna, Carol's daughter
• Rhys Ifans – Dek, Shirley's boyfriend
• Andrew Shim – Donut, Donna's boyfriend
• Ryan Bruce – Emerson, Carol and Charlie's son and Lake and Donna's brother
• Eliot Otis Brown Walters – Lake, Carol and Charlie's son and Emerson and Donna's brother
• Anthony Strachan – Jumbo (as Antony Strachan)
• David McKay – Dougy (as David Mckay)
• James Cosmo – Billy

This was the third time that Carlyle had worked with Henderson (first in Hamish Macbeth and the second in Trainspotting), the second time he had worked with Ifans (the first in The 51st State), and the fourth time he had worked with Tomlinson (first in Riff-Raff, second in Cracker and third in The 51st State).

Gijón International Film Festival 2002

• Nominated: Best Feature (Grand Prix Asturias) – Shane Meadows

• Once Upon a Time in the Midlands at IMDb
• Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. Guardian film of the week.