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Surprisingly, this wasn’t as bad as I braced myself for. It still delves waaaaaaaay too much into biopic cliches like “I am hyper-aware of the historical & cultural significance of every single moment we’re presently in!” (which aligns the series rather ironically with another show featuring similar instincts, Downton Abbey) and foreshadowing every line ever (I’m surprised there wasn’t a scene with Johnny Rotten overhearing someone say “we stopped at a hotel and it was pretty vacant” and then him looking off into the distance as genius quietly takes over). But when it wasn’t playing up everything cartoonish about the whole affair – and there’s plenty of meat on that bone – there were some real genuine, great moments nicely done by Toby Wallace as Steve Jones and Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten. It being a punk band from the 70s means of course that there’s a lot of people standing around exclaiming what is and what isn’t “punk rock”, which I don’t think really happened. Wallace in particular does a good job of portraying sadness and regret without going overboard into Hollywood maudlin-ville (in other words he dialed it back before reaching “Dave Pirner on the train in the Sometime to Return video” status.) And Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Malcolm McLaren is FANTASTIC. They did a good job with showing why Sid Vicious was how he was, and had some great moments showing his childlike side, but then for some reason had him constantly being an asshole to the band that was basically giving him a life, which was off-putting and unrealistic (I think). Having read all the books I spent a lot of time screaming at the screen but in the end it was quick and fun and better than I’d hoped for.
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