The fictionalised Steve Strange and George O’Dowd: Marc Warren and Douglas Booth eyeball each other outside the Blitz club in the TV biopic Worried About the Boy, 2010 © BBC
❚ “DOUGLAS BOOTH IS AMAZING. Somehow he has the stink of me! He just gets it. There’s something about him that reminds me of me when I was 17. So it’s a triumph. I was really impressed with his acting – and Freddie Fox too, I thought was really good at Marilyn. In fact I’m having a viewing of the film tonight and Marilyn’s coming over with my friends to watch it. The real Marilyn. I said to him, you won’t like it! But you’ll be pleased with our relationship in it. Because you know, he hates everything.
Jon meet Jon: Mathew Horne and Jon Moss
“My relationship with Jon is quite reasonable in this film. Like when we split up in the end, I was thinking I don’t remember it being all that reasonable in real life! It was more frenzied than that.
“Mathew talked a bit like Jon. I know he met Jon before he did it, and they had tea together. He’s really got the way Jon talks. Although Jon was quite posh, he used to play-act at being a bit of a lad. Mathew must have studied it because he really did get it. Mathew’s great.”
But then: ‘Soulless’ – George’s verdict changes after transmission
George’s tweet, May 16, after the broadcast
OOPS! THERE’S RUSTLING IN THE DOVECOTES OVER
THE PRESS COVERAGE OF ‘WORRIED’…
George’s tweets, May 18
➢➢ Boy George slams his BBC biopic – News agencies spread the word
➢➢ Overnight figures show 2.5 million viewers watched ‘Worried’ – Yahoo TV forums go on stirring the debate
THEN THE REVIEWERS WEIGH IN . . .
➢➢ Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman, May 20 – “Intentional or not, the film was funny, which rather undermined the seriousness with which we were clearly supposed to regard George’s contribution to pop culture”
➢➢ Howard Male on theartsdesk – “Manages to circumvent so many of the clichés common to the rock biopic”
➢➢ In the Mumsnet Telly Addicts forum, Tulpe says – “We definitely need more drama on TV rather than all these dance/singing/reality shows
➢➢ Princess Julia, Robert Elms and Gary Kemp review ‘Worried’ on Richard Bacon’s show, BBC 5Live, May 17
➢➢ Ceri Radford in The Daily Telegraph, May 17 – “Stunning, sensitive and surprisingly moving”
➢➢ VIEW verdicts on ‘Worried’ from BBC2’s The Review Show, May 14:
Julia Peyton Jones, Director of the Serpentine Gallery –
“very moving actually”
Peter York, former style editor of Harpers & Queen –
“an incredibly homo-sexy drama”
➢➢ Alexis Petridis on Radio 4’s Front Row, May 12 – “All surface and no depth”
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 