Shane Meadows will direct The Gallows Pole, telling the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners. Photo: PA ACCLAIMED director of This Is England Shane Meadows is to create a television series set in West Yorkshire for the BBC. Meadows, whose film and subsequent TV series on skinhead culture in Northern England drew critical acclaim and cult status, is to adapt the book The Gallows Pole for TV. The Gallows Pole, a novel by Benjamin Myers, fictionalises the true story of David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners and is set during the Industrial Revolution in 18th Century West Yorkshire. It follows Hartley as he assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to become counterfeiters, starting a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history.