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Pistol (miniseries)

Pistol is a British biographical drama television miniseries about British punk band the Sex Pistols. It was created by Craig Pearce for FX and directed by Danny Boyle. The series follows Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and the band's rise to prominence and notoriety. It premiered on FX on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK on 31 May 2022.

Pistol

Biographical

Craig Pearce

Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol
by Steve Jones

Craig Pearce

Danny Boyle

  • United States
  • United Kingdom

English

6

Anthony Dod Mantle

Jon Harris

45–56 minutes

  • Decibel Films
  • Sir Weighty Tomes
  • Crescent Moon Media
  • Jonesy's Jukebox
  • wiip studios
  • FXP

31 May 2022 (2022-05-31)

Premise[edit]

The six-part series follows Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and the band's rise to prominence and notoriety.

Release[edit]

Pistol premiered on FX on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore on 31 May 2022.[11]


The series was removed from Hulu and Disney+ internationally on 26 May 2023, after a downturn in subscribers and profits led to cutting over 50 shows.[12][13]

Reception[edit]

Critical response[edit]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a 65% approval rating based on 62 critic reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Danny Boyle's frenzied direction brings plenty of energy to this punk biography, but the rote conventions of a band's rise and fall make Pistol something of a misfire."[14] On Metacritic, the series has a score of 60 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[15]


Angie Han from Hollywood Reporter wrote positively that "Pistol does do better than some in breathing a bit of life into that formula, first and foremost through a pair of exceptional performances...by Anson Boon, the intense 22-year old playing front man Johnny Rotten. If John is its [the show's] soul, Malcolm McClaren is its calculating brain. As played by Thomas Brodie-Sanger, he's a Svengali so relentlessly charming, that...[he] turns manipulation into an art form itself."[16]


Empire's Beth Webb felt that "the performances vary in strength - but the collective scrappy energy of the ensemble under the director's guidance is undeniable."[17]


NME's El Hunt gave a mixed review: "Pistol could've gone further - as much as it explores the pitfalls of rock'n'roll mythology, it occasionally falls into the very same trappings that it tries to scrutinize. But, taken at face value, this is a high-energy and creatively pieced-together look back on how punk rock, with Sex Pistols at the vanguard, swept the UK and beyond.[18]


Jim Sullivan of Book and Film Globe wrote that "there's a verisimilitude here. Most of the time, you can suspend disbelief and feel like you're in on the scheme, observing the band as they stumble, scrap and score. There was a cartoonish element to the Pistols. But there's a richness and complexity to them as well and Boyle mines that. Boyle puts the Pistols at the forefront of the punk movement and I've got no quarrel with that, but he fails, by and large, to place them into the larger context of the punk explosion happening all around England: The Clash, The Jam, The Damned, many more. Yes, you get the sense that there's a wave of punk rock going on, but the Pistols seem insular and far more isolated from it than they were in reality.[19]


Madison Bloom from Pitchfork was negative: "Pistol's script is full of grand manifestos and pep talks that turn flashes of rebellion into rote history lessons ... the screenwriter seems petrified that the audience will miss something...certain phrases are repeated to a comical degree...Boyle commits the same crime of over-explaining... With its ham-fisted dialogue and gaudy editing, the new FX/Hulu show Pistol offers a sanitized kind of anarchy."[20]


Deadline Hollywood's Dominic Patter asserted that "Even with sneering classics like "God Save the Queen" in the well-crafted soundtrack mix...[the film] limps along when it should roar ... [it] gets jammed up in the contradictions of the Sex Pistols where it could have reveled in them with revolutionary enthusiasm and clear eyes."[21]

Band members' response[edit]

Speaking to The Guardian, John Lydon dismissed the series prior to seeing it as: "It's dead against everything we once stood for. The only thing you've got of value in your life, and you're going to cheapen that because you want an extra fiver? Not much of a human being there", and further commenting on the trailer: "It's karaoke, really. The voices, the way they're talking … it sounds like a bunch of kids from Tring, all discussing the latest calamities! That ain't it at all! It's so off.[22]


Glen Matlock said he was very disappointed with the series: "I'm not disappointed that it came out, and I thought it was important that it went ahead because it was based on Steve's story and take on things. And he was the guy that formed the band - not John; Steve. But my portrayal, and particularly my leaving the band — I left the band; I was not sacked. That whole episode where Steve sacked [me] is just bollocks."[23]

Accolades[edit]

Pistol was nominated for Photography & Lighting, Fiction and Production Design at the 2023 British Academy Television Awards.[24][25]

– official site (US)

Pistol

– official site (ROW)

Pistol

at IMDb

Pistol