A new “British” reboot – laid bare
The final scene of The Full Monty movie was a moment of rare joy – British blue-collar workers battle their way out of the scrap heap to stand on stage almost naked, laughing under the bright lights as the cheering voices of the crowd echo around them and they throw their hats into the air in one brief moment of glory.
The Full Monty TV series asks a brutal question – what happened next? The original cast have all returned – save Hugo Speer, fired after a runner walked into his trailer unannounced and saw him naked – and writer Simon Beaufoy with Chumbawamba singer Alice Nutter, lay their stall out in the opening frames. “Seven prime ministers and eight northern regeneration policies later…”
The club the gang stripped in has closed, Robert Carlyle’s Gaz is skip diving for mattresses, school ceilings collapse, undertakers offer paupers’ graves, food banks are ubiquitous, adults die of malnutrition and Paul Barber’s Horse has his disability benefits cut. There is some hope in the next generation – the teenagers get the best laughs – but this is a desperate plea for intervention to save a wounded community. It is powerful British drama at its best.
So what? This isn’t technically a British drama – it’s on Disney +, Disney’s streaming service which also funded Peckham-based rom com Rye Lane. British blue-collar workers have always had more respect from Hollywood – the original movie was funded by 20th Century Fox.
Public service streaming. The great defence UK broadcasters offer the government is their dedication to UK stories. But Hollywood is hiring some of Britain’s best commissioners. Monty was commissioned by former Channel 4 drama commissioner Lee Mason, Disney+’s director of scripted content for Europe. He backs good stories. Russell T Davis had It’s a Sin rejected by all UK broadcasters including C4, but Mason kept the script in a drawer until a change of management allowed an award-winning hit. Netflix’s Anne Mensah commissioned Chernobyl, and Patrick Melrose while she was at Sky. Amazon’s team come from ITN and C4 and have Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Slum Britain: 50 Years On and Britain’s Abandoned Playgrounds on their CVs.
Hollywood on the Thames. The divide between Hollywood and British talent is vanishing. Simon Beaufoy – who won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire – and Alice Nutter picketed the series premiere as part of the WGA strike. Jack Thorne, Sharon Horgan, James Graham and Steven Knight have all downed tools in support. In 2022, US film and TV productions spent £5.37 billion in the UK, contributing more to UK GDP than the fishing industry’s £1.3 billion. There are more electricians working in film and TV than in steelworks.
The Full Monty prophecy. In the 1997 original, post-industrial Sheffield former steelworkers created a local branch of the entertainment industry. As the billions of investment show, the country followed suit. Despite Sheffield being a pioneering film city however – the first ever chase movie was shot there in 1903 at Frank Mottershaw Studios – of the 45 studios in the UK, only three are in Yorkshire and none are in Sheffield. Since 1997, just seven TV series have been shot in the city – including Monty, HBO’s The Regime and The Crown for Netflix.
Photograph Disney+
