I do wonder if this is a new, officially sanctioned documentary, or just a showing of one of those old DVDs produced by outside companies interviewing Paul Gambaccini and Wayne Sleep et al (there was one with that title). If it is official I'm surprised they licensed CH5 to show it after their last effort which the band (rightfully) distanced themselves from.
cmsdrums wrote:
I do wonder if this is a new, officially sanctioned documentary, or just a showing of one of those old DVDs produced by outside companies interviewing Paul Gambaccini and Wayne Sleep et al (there was one with that title). If it is official I'm surprised they licensed CH5 to show it after their last effort which the band (rightfully) distanced themselves from.
Well I’ve just seen a trailer on Ch5....
It brought up a timeline of Freddie through the ages with different specific years on screen (74, 78, 82 and 85 were the ones I caught) with pics of Freddie supposedly from each of those years...whilst I wasn’t paying full attention, apart from 74 they all seemed to be wrong (eg a Magic Tour pic for 85, a Works tour pic for 82 etc).
Based on that I’m expecting this programme to be light on accuracy....
First 10 minites seems ok....no Paul Gambaccini and people who actually knew him. May be some finer details that are incorrect, but its only a bloody documentary lol
I guess its hard to make a new documentary at this point with anything new in it. Plus its aimed at the casual viewer rather than some of a rabid fans on here :D
It's not a bad documentary at all, it's got facts on key events. It's got Queen music throughout which makes a big difference in these unofficial and cheap documentaries. It's got most of the key events involved - it's a chronological documentary going from birth to today's legacy. And throughout, they've got 13 segments littered throughout the hour and a half where they would include a key moment (e.g. Freddie going to boarding school in India, Queen getting their big break with SSOR on TOTP and Queen's controversial concerts in Sun City). In fact, it's one of the best unofficial documentaries I've seen. It's quite interesting too because they had people that I've never seen or even heard before who were friends of Freddie's in the 1960s. Also, they had Ratty and Tim Staffell interviewed in there too. Also, they had interviews clips of Brian and Roger speaking... but taken from the Days of Our Lives documentary.
It was mostly chronological but there were some things moved about by three or four years (not to the same extent as the Queen biopic). I think the worst one they did was after AOBTD, they talked about the IWTBF video and how they lost America. They had mentioned how they were the biggest band on the planet for that moment and how they lost America with that video. And the thing which linked on from this item is how Queen conquered new audiences throughout the world and then they talked about playing South America for the first time. I know it's a wrong order but it does seem like Channel 5 have made it seem more positive by moving events, there's something positive after the negative. Which in reality there was, just not as quickly as in real life.
If you get the chance to watch it I would. It's mostly new people speaking but nearly everything said is correct (I don't think I saw anything which made me think for a moment that's false).
Also, if you want to find out who took photographs and who filmed/directed videos then watch the documentary because every time a media form appeared on screen, it stated thorough information about it.
Watching it now and it's typical Channel 5 RUBBISH. It oozes cheapnesss. It's just talking heads, stills and stock film clips of 60s swinging London. There's nothing in that you haven't seen or heard before. Even the Queen video clips they used are poorly upscaled to HD.
Don't bother requesting it as it's not worth sharing. In fact i'm going to delete it which i've never done before with a Queen TV recording.