20 Underrated Movies From 2000 You've Probably Never Seen

Released: 3rd November 2000 (UK)

The turn of the Millennium found British cinema in the grip of a post-Full Monty trend toward reworking Northern working-class kitchen sink dramas into uplifting crowdpleasers.

The year's top Brit hit, Billy Elliot, worked wonders with the formula by combining ballet and declining mining communities in the North East. But another less remembered Geordie story from 2000 is also worth revisiting.

Directed by Mark Herman, whose Yorkshire hits Brassed Off and Little Voice showed him to be a dab hand at mixing Northern grit with a spark of joy, Purely Belter tells the story of two football mad teenage lads from broken homes desperate to raise the money for Newcastle United season tickets (an object of much greater desire twenty years ago when the Magpies had recently been title contenders).

Engaging in money making schemes from babysitting to bank robbery, via stealing Alan Shearer's car (with a rather wooden cameo from the man himself), the two go through a variety of scrapes, both comedic and dark, in their virtually impossible quest to drum up the required £1000.

Perhaps not as immediately impactful as Billy Elliot, Purely Belter nevertheless has much to offer and things to say about the value of football to Northern communities and identities and the way that the expensive modern game is pushing those very people away.