Name: The Token King
Genre: Drama
Released: 1993-11-10
Duration: 55 min
Rating: 7.6
Cast: St Clair Andrew, Daniel Bamford, Charles Bobby

This hard to find school drama was shown on British television's Channel 4 in the early 90s. It was repeated a second time which I recorded onto VHS tape. I had the common sense to save from VHS to DVD when the inevitable deterioration began to occur. My copy is still a bit blurry but better than nothing.

Ray Kilby's 1970s drama is set at an urban comprehensive school. Pupil Paul Wesson (Jeremy Payne) is making small time pocket money by trading school dinner tokens. Another pupil, Vicky Hooper (young Samantha Morten), immediately realises the big profits that can be made if the system can be rigged and offers to go into partnership with gullible Paul. Vicky has a ruthless no nonsense, trample everyone else into the gutter on the way to the top streak to her character. As the drama unfolds the token exchange enterprise begins to expand into troublesome territory when a couple of skinheads catch on and decided to go into business for themselves. James Hooten and Wayne Shipman are amusing as the thuggish duo and play their roles with relish. Thaydo-'Are you looking at me or chewing a brick?' Vicky-'I'm gonna have you.' And she does. 

The story is a comment on the fraud and corruption that nearly always goes hand in hand with the financial and stock market circles of operation. Events following the 2008 disaster remind us of this. The Vicky types of this world are well equipped to become very successful in such a climate.

Ray Kilby has created the mood and feeling of a 70's comprehensive quite nicely. Those were the days of Chopper bikes, Mud and The Bay City Rollers. Look out for a great playground dance sequence to Mud's 'Tiger Feet'. If you are not British and have never heard of The Bay City Rollers please don't look them up, it will spoil your whole day and possibly the entire week. Playground politics could often be brutal and corporal punishment was the norm. Chalk dusters really did fly across the classroom, and if your teacher did give you a belt over the knuckles with a slipper you simply accepted that you had stepped over the line, learned your lesson and got on with it. There was none of this going bleating to your parents. The drama captures the realities of the time, it has a slightly sadistic PE teacher, a head in the clouds drama teacher, a hippy nutcase, a clueless headmaster and a geography teacher sporting trendy flares, kipper tie and a moustache. Yes, we all remember them, especially that PE tyrant who made us all take freezing cold cross-country runs in December. Ahhh....the memories.

The actual school used for filming was The Frank Wheldon School in Nottingham.

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

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Pupils Vicky and Paul are operating a lucrative business trading school dinner tokens. It started well but can it continue that way ?

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The Token King

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