Disney delivers a Sex Pistols story without the anarchy
Adrama about the Sex Pistols should be a riot. Yet Pistol (Disney+) is so lacking in anarchic spirit that it may as well be a Coldplay biopic.
What has gone wrong here? Danny Boyle is the director who gave us Trainspotting, a film that crackled with energy. The blame must lie with the studio because – odd as it may sound for a show featuring sex, drugs and a great deal of swearing – the end product feels Disney-fied.
It is a conventional retelling, ticking off all the staging posts in the Sex Pistols story: first meeting with Malcolm Mclaren, first gig, the infamous Bill Grundy interview, the Jubilee boat trip. The script is based on the memoir of guitarist Steve Jones but the sanitised tone makes lines of dialogue sound like they’re taken from a CBBC show, even if that’s how it really happened. Witness the origin story of Sid Vicious, aka John Ritchie:
Johnny Rotten: “We’ll call you Sid, after the hamster.”
Ritchie, playing with the hamster and receiving a nip to his finger: “Ow. Sid’s really vicious…”
The casting is hit-and-miss, the biggest miss being baby-faced Thomas Brodie-sangster (forever the annoying child from Love Actually) as Mclaren. The character is unbearable, but it’s difficult to know if that’s deliberate or down to Brodie-sangster’s hammy performance.
Jones is the centre of the story and we often get taken back to his traumatic childhood at the hands of an abusive stepfather. Toby Wallace does a creditable job in the role, particularly with the accent (he is Australian but you’d never know it). As the other band members, Anson Boon does liven things up as Rotten, and Louis Partridge introduces us to a sweet and not terribly bright Vicious, before the Nancy Spungen nightmare. Talulah Riley plays Vivienne Westwood at the midpoint between Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous and Mrs Hall from All Creatures Great and Small.
As a visual accompaniment to a Wikipedia entry, it’s passable. But the storytelling is so superficial that the Sid and Nancy episode – which should be a gut punch – barely registers. The most engaging character isn’t one of the band, but Chrissie Hynde (Sydney Chandler); the strongest performance is from Bianca Stephens as a footnote in the band’s story, a disturbed young woman who inspired the track Bodies.
The editing is overpowering, constantly throwing archive footage into the mix. It feels made for US viewers who need a paint-by-numbers guide to Britishness. John Lydon was
right to refuse involvement in this Great Disney Swindle.
Mercifully for all of us, Drawers Off: The Big Naked Painting Challenge (Channel 4) is a teatime show. If it was in a late-night slot, imagine the full-frontal assault. But at 5.30pm, it’s positively genteel. This is a life-drawing competition, but the models preserve their modesty thanks to some strategically-placed props.
In the first series of the show, broadcast last year, each of the five contestants took a turn at posing. That idea has now been ditched in favour of professional models, which feels like a better idea. The host is the same: Jenny Eclair, who is just right for the show. She bustles about giving the contestants encouragement and resists the temptation to make innuendoladen jokes at every opportunity.
It’s smut-free. The only jokes about nudity are in the programme’s title.
A certain level of talent is required from the contestants, which weeds out any reality show wannabes. These five, who will compete over the course of a week, included a retired graphic designer in a jaunty neckerchief and a 20-year-old “self-taught barber”. As the voiceover noted: “They’re three words you never want to hear together.”
A man from Belfast said he did a lot of “drink and draw”. Have you heard of this? I stumbled across it the other day when I walked past a place advertising painting parties and enquired about booking a children’s birthday. It turns out they’re for adults only, and the point is to paint while getting sloshed.
Anyway, Drawers Off is booze-free but everyone still seems to be having a lovely time. Some of the contestants explained how art has helped their mental health. Lizzie, a live illustrator for weddings, suffered from low moods but when drawing she is “transported into bliss”; retired accountant Sophie has been diagnosed with young onset Parkinson’s disease but rediscovering art via a life class had lifted her spirits.
The contestants mark each other’s work, with a winner unveiled at the end of the week. “You mustn’t feel guilty – it’s a competition, there’s £1,000 up for grabs!” Eclair told one chap who worried about being too critical. It’s a good-natured little show. Pistol ★★ Drawers Off: The Big Naked Painting Challenge ★★★