Pistol (miniseries)
A miniseries about the Sex Pistols' rise and fall.
A British biographical musical drama miniseries, Pistol tracks the Sex Pistols' rise to fame and infamy. Craig Pearce created the show for FX, with Danny Boyle directing. It focuses on guitarist Steve Jones and the band's journey.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Biographical
- Creator
- Craig Pearce
- Based on
- Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, Steve Jones
- Director
- Danny Boyle
- Country
- United States; United Kingdom
- Language
- English
- Episodes
- 6
- Executive producers
- Danny Boyle
- Anita Camarata
- Hope Hartman
- Steve Jones
- Paul Lee
- Gail Lyon
- Craig Pearce
- Tracey Seaward
Facts from the source article.
Production
Toby Wallace was cast as Steve Jones, with Maisie Williams among the supporting cast. Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Talulah Riley, and Iris Law joined in March as filming began, which included some work in Hemel Hempstead. Production designer Kave Quinn studied Julien Temple's documentary The Filth and the Fury and Andrew Marr's BBC docuseries The Making of Modern Britain to depict 1970s London. Boyle let actors run through scenes without a traditional shot list, using split-screen editing, flashbacks, archival footage, freeze-frames, gaudy dreamscapes, and slow-motion to match punk energy. Concert footage was recorded live without overdubbing or studio effects, with actors playing instruments and performing vocals. Wallace, Slater, and Chandler met their real-life counterparts; Boon studied Rotten's stage presence and read his books after being unable to meet him due to Rotten's disavowal of the project. Jones met with creator Pearce to provide input, and Cook was involved as needed. The soundtrack included songs by the Sex Pistols, The Pretenders, Blondie's "X Offender", and John Cooper Clarke's poem "Evidently Chickentown", among others.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a 65% approval rating from 62 critic reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10 and a consensus calling Boyle's direction energetic but the band's rise-and-fall formula a misfire. Metacritic gives a score of 60 out of 100 from 28 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews. Angie Han of Hollywood Reporter praised performances by Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Malcolm McLaren, calling the latter a Svengali who turns manipulation into art. Empire's Beth Webb noted that performances vary in strength but the ensemble's scrappy energy under Boyle is undeniable. NME's El Hunt gave a mixed review, saying the series could have gone further and occasionally falls into the trappings it tries to scrutinize, but is a high-energy look at how punk swept the UK. Jim Sullivan of Book and Film Globe wrote that verisimilitude allows suspension of disbelief, and Boyle mines richness and complexity in the band, but fails to place them in the larger punk context of The Clash, The Jam, and others, making the Pistols seem more isolated than they were.
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