AN acclaimed film producer, who lived in Holmes Chapel, is making a TV drama for Channel 4 based on the characters who helped him win a BAFTA.

Mark Herbert, who attended Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School, is busy making the four-part series called We Were Faces, with director Shane Meadows.

It is the sequel to the award-winning This Is England – a £2.3 million drama about young skinheads in the early 1980s.

Mark and Shane’s film was nominated alongside the blockbusters Atonement and The Bourne Ultimatum, when it won the BAFTA for Best British Film last year.

His parents, Pauline and Gerald, watched the ceremony from their Portree Drive home.

At the time Mark, a former Holmes Chapel Rugby Club member, said: “I was convinced we weren’t going to win.

“I was so shocked, and picking up the award almost felt like an out-of-body experience, especially when Sylvester Stallone told me he loved the film.

“That was just the most surreal moment. I kept saying to my wife: Pinch me – it feels like I shouldn’t be here.”

We Were Faces will be produced by Mark’s company Warp Films.

Picking up where This Is England left off, the series is set in 1986 – the year Chris de Burgh was at number one, Top Gun was filling the cinemas and more than 3.4 million Brits were unemployed.

All key characters from the film are expected to return.

Shane, who has worked with Mark for six years, added: “When I finished This Is England, I had a wealth of material and unused ideas that I felt very keen to take further – audiences seemed to really respond to the characters.

“I also saw in the experiences of the young in 1986 many resonances to now – recession, lack of jobs, sense of the world at a turning point.”

Mark also produced Shane’s new film Le Donk, which premiered at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival.

His family moved from Yorkshire to Selkirk Drive, Holmes Chapel, about 25 years ago. He often visited Knutsford’s cinema with friends.

Mark, whose dad worked at Ilford in Mobberley, had his first taste of the film industry when he worked as a runner, and later became assistant location manager for hit film Brassed Off.

He was then location manager for several other films, including the Oscar-nominated Little Voice.

Last year he told the Guardian: “I got to sit with the director for days and that gave me a massive insight into how a film is made.

“I never had a career plan, I just took it one step at a time.”

We Were Faces will film in spring 2010.