"The phantom of the Odeon strikes again!"
Yes, I know. I'm juggling so many shows so why start a new one? Well, at least I've nearly finished Stranger Things, right?
Wow. This is much more textured, interesting telly than I expected from a biopic of merry Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.
We begin, as is traditional in all Pistols-related telly, with a '70s montage framed arounda live Bowie performance of "Moonage Daydream" and Steve nicking stuff, but including such things as unmentionable pop, Barbara Windsor royalist wankery of a rather less ironic and metatextual natutre than the recent frolics, bad clothes, bad decor.
And we get to know Steve, a Sex Pistol who isn't John or Sid- must get round to blogging Sid and Nancy at some point- but is more interesting than either of them. A likeable rogue, who nicks stuff and shags around but is charming and decent underneat it all. Poor, vulnerable, not from a loving home like Paul Cook, whose parents let him play drums in their bedroom but chucked out of his home by a sexually abusive stepfather.
Yet he finds a surrogate dad in Malcolm McLaren (played, disturbinhly.by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who I remember well as a child actor in Doctor Who), and already we understand their bond. We also get to know and like Chrissie Hynde, to laugh at Nick Kent, to wallow in a very real-seeming '70s, an era when culture was real and contemporary, and previous decades were not available at a click of the mouse, and borstals were bloody scary..
This is unexpectedly good telly. And Johnny Rotten is still to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment