A year or two back, I saw Paddy Considine’s short film Dog Altogether and was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with Considine afterwards. He mentioned at the time that he hoped to expand the short into a feature-length film and that we was working towards that.

Well, Dog Altogether was a brilliant piece of work (the BAFTA people agreed with me) and I’ve been looking forward to seeing what Considine would do with a full-length film.

Tyrannosaur is what he’s come up with and, Christ, he hasn’t disappointed.

If you’ve heard anything about Tyrannosaur, you’ve probably heard about the violence. There is violence. It’s real and it’s unflinching and it’s harrowing. Tyrannosaur has a huge, savage, streak all through it and it can’t fail to affect you.

What I hope you’ve also heard, though, is that it’s a brilliantly beautiful film. Ugliness and grime has never looked so beautiful.

Peter Mullan plays Joseph, a man with serious anger-management issues. It would be incredibly easy for that the slip into one-dimensional raging but Mullan’s skill as an actor—as well as Considine’s writing and directing—never allows this to happen. That Joseph is capable of extremes of violence is clear from the beginning but his regret and his desire to change is beautifully and subtly drawn too. The simmering of Joseph’s rage—the hair-trigger that could release at any point—keeps you glued to him all through the film.

Olivia Colman too, is truly excellent. In common with many, I know her mostly from Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb sketches. Her performance here couldn’t be farther from that world. Hannah, Colman’s character, has her own problems with violence. A devout Christian in an abusive marriage, the humiliation and suffering she undergoes is almost beyond belief but it’s so real, so authentic, that we’ve no choice but to believe it.

It’s hard to watch Tyrannosaur. Very hard. But you can’t take your eyes off the screen. To do that would be to let down these characters.

Considine has created something amazing here. The last time I saw the bleakness and griminess of human-nature so beautifully captured on film was probably the Red Riding films based on David Peace’s books. Tyrannosaur doesn’t have the same nihilism and darkness as those, though, and despite its seriously disturbing subject matter, actually leaves you with a little hope at the end.

Astonishingly well-written, wonderfully filmed and acted. If you haven’t seen Tyrannosaur, remedy that. I want to see it again.

It seems I didn’t.

I tried to take a break.  I started two other books and gave up a dozen pages in.  They were too light.  My brain had grown accustomed to the distressing world of Peace’s Yorkshire and was unable to turn itself to something less somber and grim.

That was slightly worrying.

As it turns out, 1980 is slightly (very slightly) less bleak than either of the previous books in the series.  Less bleak than 1977 – I think – because its protagonist is not so tainted as either Bob Fraser or Jack Whitehead (77′s ‘heroes’); his point of view a little less grimy and sordid. Less bleak than 1974, possibly, because even the grisliness of the Ripper murders holds less emotional resonance than the tortures and murders of the children in the earlier book.

Don’t think it’s a walk in the park however.

Peace brings more of the prose we’re used to; expressive, personal, and beautifully burrowing. We’re with our new protagonist, Peter Hunter but he’s slightly more removed from what’s come before. For all the pain and lies and secrets that are in Hunter’s head, we’re just glad that it’s not so awful in there as in previous books.

Peace makes some progress towards winding up this tetralogy (quadrilogy isn’t a real word) in 1980 and I’m looking forward to finally getting to 1983.

This time, however, there will be something between this and the next Peace book.

At least it is in David Peace’s 1977. Bleak, gloomy and darker than closing your eyes at the bottom of an ocean where even those weird, ugly fish are scared to go.

Awful, terrible, beautiful darkness.  Peace just won’t leave you alone. His words gnaw and eat at you and his story remains in your, now fetid, brain for a long, long time.

I read 1974 a few months ago and needed a bit of time before moving on. I’ll need more time before moving to 1980. These are not easy-reads but they are remarkable reads.

Much has been made of Peace’s ‘stream of consciousness’ prose and it is beautifully lyrical and engaging.  The story focuses on the Yorkshire Ripper murders and is told from the first-person perspective of two different characters (two characters from 1974).  This throws you for a few seconds as you process the first character switch but it’s easy to accommodate.  Oddly – and adding to the disorientation – while both characters narrate their 1st-person story in alternating chapters, one does so in the present-tense and one in the past-tense.

And the violence…  While there was plenty of violence in my last read, No Country For Old Men, it was more distant; slightly more stylised. Peace’s violence is in your face (and your hair and under your fingernails).  It’s visceral and savage and affects you more deeply. Like I say, it’s difficult to forget.

I’m two thirds through and I’m now going to sneak off somewhere quiet and finish it.  If I don’t post again, it’s because I’m huddled in a foetal position, weeping quietly and despairing.

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed my new Penguin Classics mug.  I recently treated myself to two of them. Keep ‘em peeled to see the other make an appearance soon.

*I’m certain I’m not the first to have made this, rather weak, joke.  Apologies.