Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I revealed the British settings in my NaNoWriMo project. Jean enjoyed the memoir of children’s author Rosemary Sutcliff. Sim shared casting news about the upcoming BBC series, A Discovery of Witches. Tina reviewed The Cottage Cookbook, complete with a yummy potato soup. Brona read two books set in London during Dewey’s Readathon — The London Eye Mystery and Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. Becky reviewed George Eliot’s classic, Adam Bede. Since I wrote about the Gunpowder Plot a couple of weeks ago, Mike shared his post on Ashby St Ledgers, the village where the plan was hatched — and note the recent comments about a recent series running on BBC. I wonder if we’ll get a chance to see that in the US.

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Horror is my least favorite genre of film, but I often make an exception around Halloween. This year’s selection was worth it.

Attack the Block is an alien invader movie. Instead of the usual plot of government entities coordinating a response, we get to see how young gang members living in council housing in South London handle such a threat. That was a refreshing take on the alien invasion story.

There’s a lot of humor, which always makes me enjoy a horror movie more.

The acting is superb. If I were 30 years younger, I’d have a crush on John Boyega who is, now, best known for his role of Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Attack the Block, from 2011, was his first film role after a couple of roles in London theater productions. If you missed it, when Boyega was promoting Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he did impressions including a startling one of Pinnochio from Shrek. Here’s the version from Good Morning America on ABC.

Another major character is played by Jodie Whittaker. I know her best as Beth, the grieving mother, on Broadchurch. And, I know I’m not the only one looking forward to her as the first female incarnation of The Doctor in the Doctor Who.

The action of the story all takes place on Guy Fawkes Night, so this would be a good selection for the 5th of November if you can get your hands on it that fast.

Have you seen Attack the Block? What did you think?