SHANE Meadows, the Midlands auteur of modern British cinema, calls Somers Town a “fantastic accident”.

He had intended to chill out for a year after This Is England while mulling over his next big film project, King Of The Gypsies, when a combination of funding from Eurostar and an unexpected invitation led him to move his storytelling skills temporarily to London.

Eurostar’s involvement ends up being minimal, and thankfully not contrived, giving Meadows licence to bring his familiar gifts to the fore in a slight but engaging tale written by his regular screenwriting buddy, Paul Fraser.

Meadows signs up another favourite, former Sunhouse singer Gavin Clark, for a typically lugubrious, kitchen-sink soundtrack to Meadows’ absurdist collision of the tragic and the comic.

Somers Town is a teenage tale of friendship and first love among outsiders, set in everyday London around King’s Cross and St Pancras.

Tomo (Thomas Turgoose, from This Is England) has run away from a life of nothing in Nottingham on turning 16. Beaten and robbed of his only possessions on his first night, he befriends Marek (newcomer Piotr Jagiello), the neglected son of a Polish labourer working on the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, who hides him away in their tiny flat.

Marek spends his days photographing, his eye on the French waitress (Elisa Lasowski) at the local café. Tomo has a crush on her too, and so begin the rites of passage, the cross-cultural bonds and conflicts, that lead eventually from black-and-white London to Paris in glorious colour for Meadows’ happiest ever finale.

From the misspelt name Terry Henry on a counterfeit Arsenal shirt to cheeky scally Turgoose in a dress, Meadows’ populist humour is to the fore, with less of the grit than usual, but his customary sympathy and energetic larks.

DVD extras: Director and cast interviews; Shane Meadows’ Masterclass at Tribeca Film Festival; television spots; theatrical trailer.