Other Plans, Episode 1

Part 1

In a part of North-West London that has been up and coming for years, the High Street of Raynes End is a late developer. Looking at it from a distance, down one of the tree-lined avenues leading on to it, the buildings of the High Street look grand - the shabbiness only becomes apparent when you get closer. But when you get closer still, a certain shabby grandness re-emerges. It's not necessarily in the reflection of the window of Alaska Fried Chicken, or the £1.49 Shop, but it's there.

Layers of the street's history can be seen in the shop fronts. The years in the 70s when nearly every shop felt the need to have a punning name are represented. Opened in the days when air flight was still glamorous, you can still get your hair done at British HairWays, although one of the younger stylists dreams of the day when he can get his name over the door with a re-brand as Ryan's Hair.

The 80s record shop TRAX is a ghostly presence through the old-fashionedly futuristic type used on the fading sign above the 'prime retail space'. It's now occasionally used as a short term charity shop. From about the same era there's a grocers, with crates outside full of recognisable and unrecognisable exotic fruit and vegetables. It's often mentioned as a great local institution by many of the residents of the big houses on adjoining streets, but very rarely used by any of them.

The school outfitters is the longest standing occupant. There since the 60s, it's still using mannequins with moulded on school caps that don't look quite right these days, even when covered with official issue school hoodies. But the shop that most looks like it comes from a different era is Secrets, the adult shop. Behind the purple neon sign and tinted glass shopfront, presumably the biggest secret being kept from customers is the existence of the internet.

The grandness comes when you look deeply, and see every shop was built on hopes and dreams. Including the bookies, making a tidy living out of the more unrealistic ones. And the bookies isn't the only place that dreams have faded - even a Subway franchise is opened with a hope that this one shop could be the start of something big. That hope flickers to life in the sandwich shop every time Carla the owner/manager inducts a new team member into her retail philosophy, and dies again when the new guy mainly wants to know when his breaks are, and if there's anything he can take home at the end of the day.

Then in the centre of it the High Street stands The State, a former cinema-turned bingo hall that's turned into a cinema again. It rises above the single storey buildings around it, promising to soar into the suburban sky, its art deco exterior a beacon that can be seen for miles around. The promise of the building is overshadowed now, though, by the monolithic office block at the junction with the main road, hiding it from view from most angles. But if you stand outside Secrets, and the sun is setting on a clear day, and you're looking the right way and not trying to peer in through the sex shop's dark glass, you can sense the grandeur the place was always intended to have as its silhouette sweeps across the buildings opposite. The ghost of an idea of old New York.

Inside, it's not showing the latest blockbusters in 3D with the latest Dolby BowelQuake surround sound. It's not showing subtitled Bosnian coming-of-age-in-a-time-of-conflict movies either. Not that the owners have anything against superheroes or sensitive auteurs, quite the opposite. But Peter and Jen are looking for a place for The State that's filling in some gaps. Finding the classics that still have resonance and relevance today. Movies that make you nostalgic for a time before you were born; more modern blockbusters you weren't allowed to see at the cinema because you were a kid and they were certificate 15. Nearly obscure comedies that were just that bit too mainstream to become cult classics, too clever to smash the box office. These films make up the weekly programme for The State. It doesn't hurt that these movies are cheap for them to get hold of.