Every 22-minute film in this Sky Arts anthology stages a rumour you half-remember: Eddie Marsan’s Bob Dylan blagging his way into a London bedsit, David Threlfall’s Samuel Beckett chauffeuring a teenage André the Giant to school, Noel Clarke’s Muhammad Ali talking a stranger off a ledge. Writers Neil Forsyth, Roger Drew and others treat the anecdotes as shaggy-dog stories, letting the joke hang on whether anyone, even the participants, believes what just happened. The result is light, caffeinated and quietly addictive, drawing over 600,000 viewers and parking the channel in its top three slots most weeks.
The fourth run ended in October 2020, but headlines belong to the episode that never aired: Joseph Fiennes painted white to play Michael Jackson, a decision criticised by Paris Jackson and withdrawn after the trailer dropped. The pulled film eclipsed the series’ actual accolades, among them an International Emmy nomination for Best Drama Series and a Writers’ Guild Award nod for Forsyth’s Waiting for Andre script. Sky has not released the episode and no replacement is scheduled. The remaining 25 instalments stay in rotation, proof that a good myth sometimes survives better when you don’t examine it too closely.
Production Details
Sky Arts / 4 Seasons / 25 Episodes / 2017
Created by: Ben Palmer
Showrunner(s): Morwenna Gordon
Writer(s): Neil Webster, Neil Forsyth, Ed Dyson
Producer(s): Ben Worsfield
Music: Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley
Main Cast
Dustin Demri-Burns as Francis Rossi
Paul Kaye as Shep Gordon
Iwan Rheon as Adolf Hitler
Rupert Grint as Gustl
Eddie Marsan as Bob Dylan
Paul Ritter as Dave
Katherine Parkinson as Ange
David Threlfall as Samuel Beckett
Ben Chaplin as Cary Grant
Aidan Gillen as Timothy Leary
Noel Clarke as Muhammad Ali
Osy Ikhile as Joe
