There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy...
I'm sure many of you reading this in the UK caught BBC 2's dramatic presentation on Sunday evening, Worried About The Boy, about the pre-fame Boy George and the birth of the New Romantic movement in the UK.
The drama was part of BBC 2's Eighties Season and as you would expect of any accurate portrayal of the period, David Bowie's influence loomed large over the ninety minute broadcast. As you can see from the montage above, the image of David Bowie was frequently on view, usually in George's bedroom.
The excellent soundtrack contained "Heroes", Beauty And The Beast and Always Crashing In The Same Car, among other classics from the period...that period being from the first days of Steve Strange's Blitz club in London, (that arose after the success of Bowie Nights at Billy's in 1978) up to Culture Club's first appearance on TOTPs in 1982.
The emotional ups and downs of George's early days as a face on the London scene were interspersed with flashforwards to his much publicised problems with drug addiction in 1986.
Aside from the music, the costumes, hair and make-up were superb, (if not a little more professional than the originals) and the casting certainly wasn't unflattering on the whole.
In one hilarious scene, (picture above and bottom left in montage above) we even glimpse Bowie's hand and leg as he emerges from his car during a visit to Blitz where he is received by a spellbound Steve Strange (played by Marc Warren) who falls to his knees to kiss Bowie's hand...all to the tune of Beauty And The Beast.
The scene was based on real events when Bowie went to the club in search of extras for the Ashes To Ashes video, though I'm not sure how accurate Strange's reaction to the apparition before him was.
The ensuing hysteria as Bowie enters the club was well staged. It seems the programme makers had the good sense not to try and use a Bowie lookalike that might have spoiled the effect of this visit from on high. Bowie instead remains invisible to the viewer among the excited throng, like the queen bee in her hive surrounded by attentive worker bees.
Here's a bit of dialogue between Boy George (played by Douglas Booth) and Jon Moss (Mathew Horne) shortly after a confused and drug ravaged George crashes into former lover Moss's front garden to the tune of...you can guess that one...
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Boy George: I'm going to prison aren't I?
Jon Moss: You're not going to prison.
BG: I won't survive in a place like that.
JM: No one's going to prison.
BG: Don't you watch the news? That Norman Tebbit wants to lock me up and throw away the key.
JM: You shouldn't have fucking voted for them then, should you? What's his beef anyway. You're a rock 'n' roll stereotype, we've been exporting them for years.
BG: What have I done that's so evil?
JM: You got a little older. A little less cute... (long pause) It's like Bowie.
BG: Bowie?
JM: You think he didn't go through this shit? He killed Ziggy he didn't know where to go next. Then he puts out Station To Station and everyone thinks it's the end. But what happens after that he finds his way to Berlin and records Low.
BG: I love Low.
JM: Well that's where you are right now, somewhere between Station To Station and Low. It's a transition.
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Hmm..."He killed Ziggy...Then he puts out Station To Station." What happened to Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs (and attendant tour), David Live and Young Americans?
I also don't particularly remember feeling like it was the end of Bowie when he released Station To Station. He embarked on a world tour, his debut feature film The Man Who Fell To Earth was released and he returned to the studio to work on Low, the groundbreaking album he released a year after Station To Station that informed much of the best bits of the New Romantic sound.
Anyway, these are minor quibbles and I don't think Worried About The Boy was meant to be taken too seriously.
If you're in the UK and you didn't see it yet, you still have a few days left to view it here. If you're not in the UK, perhaps you'll be mildly consoled with this link to Boy George's own opinion of the programme.
