I IAN HYLAND on the weekend’s telly
The Kemps: All True, BBC2 ★★★★★
t’s not quite Grolsch bottle tops on loafers, but Matt and Luke Goss of Bros appear to have set another trend: that of pop siblings making hilarious spoof rockumentaries.
Okay, I know some people are still unsure as to whether their odyssey When The Screaming Stops was actually supposed to funny.
In the case of Martin and Gary Kemp’s, that much was clear from the moment the narrator said the younger Spandau Ballet sibling was born Martin Luther Kemp.
If silly puns like that are your kind of humour there is plenty to enjoy here. The show has the feel of a serious BBC4 documentary that has been reworked by the people behind BBC3’s Murder in Successville, or Kevin Bishop’s classic Channel 4 series Star Stories.
To cut a long story short, it was TV gold (always believe in your soul), and even its more obvious set pieces boasted at least one memorable line or twist. Highlights included Martin reeling off a list of foods the boys ate while growing up in post-war North London – beef in gas, ham pamphlet – as well as a whole section on the pair’s child actor days, in which the Children’s Film Foundation was archly described as “the Pixar of its day in the 60s and 70s”.
There was also a brilliantly done skit on Who Do You Think You Are? in which the brothers discovered one of their ancestors invented the humble clothes peg.
My favourite bits though were the spliced-up montages of the hammy violence that characterised their joint work in The Krays and Martin’s solo work as the late Steve Owen in EastEnders.
The inclusion of these clips confirmed that the Kemp boys are able to laugh at themselves.
If you missed this last night, get on BBC iPlayer and have a good laugh at them too.