Hope you can get it on BBC America ?

An infectious new BBC drama relives Boy George’s glory days, before the singer fell from grace.


By Sam Richards
Published: 4:12PM BST 14 May 2010
Douglas Booth as Boy George in Worried About the Boy
Douglas Booth as Boy George in Worried About the Boy Photo: BBC
http://www.telegraph.co.u...eorge.html


Boy George’s reputation is in need of a quick touch-up. The former Culture Club singer will soon have a new album to promote – his first since 2002 – but he’s spent more time in prison than in the UK pop charts over the last decade, and earlier this year his probationary terms (of a custodial sentence for falsely imprisoning a male escort in 2007) denied him the easy option of career rehab via Celebrity Big Brother.

So it’s serendipitous for George that BBC Two has chosen to lead off its new season on the Eighties with Worried About the Boy, a 90-minute dramatisation of the controversial singer’s more carefree early years.


‘I wanted to write an affectionate film and highlight what it is that people like about Boy George,’ explains writer Tony Basgallop, outside a Salford pub that, for reasons of cost, is currently masquerading as George’s early-Eighties Soho hang-out the Blitz club. As we speak, 20 teenage extras in full New Romantic garb – all gaudy eyeshadow and big hair – troop out of the busy make-up trailer and up the stairs past bemused afternoon drinkers.

If all you remember about Boy George is the heroin addiction which tarnished his early success, or the embarrassing arrests, including one in 2005 for falsely reporting a burglary, Worried About the Boy tries to balance the picture. It offers a convincing glimpse of a sensitive, rebellious pop pioneer who defined the flamboyant fashions of the early Eighties and took androgyny into the mainstream.

‘In ’82, when most of this film is set, I was 14 years old,’ Basgallop continues. ‘I thought Boy George was fantastic – we hadn’t seen anyone like that before. In ’86, when the drugs took hold, I felt concerned above all, because I’d grown up with him. You could make a completely different film about Boy George, but I wanted people to remember that when Culture Club came out it was a time of great excitement.’

Worried About the Boy succeeds in conveying the colourful whirl of George’s early life, leading up to his first startling appearance, in heavy make-up, on Top of the Pops. Born in 1961, George O’Dowd left the family home aged 16 to live in a squat. We see him in the film then establishing himself as a ‘face’ on London’s club scene and mingling with stars such as David Bowie. There are fights, flings and 40 costume changes before he eventually finds fame with cosmopolitan pop combo Culture Club and falls in love with his drummer Jon Moss. The pair’s affair forms the drama’s backbone.

Seventeen-year-old unknown Douglas Booth has been cast in the drama’s lead role, about which he’s effusive. ‘There are times when [Boy George] can be quite cruel to people around him, but he’s very tender as well,’ says Booth. ‘He has a very passionate, fiery relationship with Jon Moss... He’s loving, wicked, vulnerable, irresponsible… and I have a chance to play it all.’

George himself will be flattered by Booth’s portrayal: he is handsome, and he’s caught George’s haughty mischievousness. The singer has acted as a consultant on the project, lending some of his outfits.

‘George sent me a message before we started filming, saying, “I just want to wish you the best of luck… and don’t be camp!’’’ says the engaging Booth. ‘He didn’t want anyone to play him as a camp stereotype, because actually he’s quite manly.’

Gavin & Stacey’s Mathew Horne, who plays Moss, agrees that George’s popular image doesn’t convey the many facets of his character. ‘The affectionate and sexual side of George that comes out in this film is quite enlightening,’ he explains. ‘You get a nice dollop of pathos. I think ultimately Boy George is a bit misunderstood – he is a wonderful English eccentric.’ The actor doesn’t dwell on the darker, self-destructive side of George’s brand of eccentricity.

Horne is already a star, whereas Booth is one in the making. Booth has recently featured alongside Maggie Smith in the Julian Fellowes film From Time to Time, and fronted a campaign for Burberry. He spends almost every second of Worried About the Boy on screen, and remains utterly absorbing throughout.

Booth may have been born long after Boy George’s singing career had evaporated but he insists that George played an important role in British cultural history. ‘He was huge in showing young people that being gay, or cross-dressing, was not evil or horrible,’ he says of a time when the only openly gay men on TV were middle-aged camp stereotypes. ‘The [New Romantic] fashion movement that started at the Blitz club spread across the nation and gave people a whole mode of expression for their sexuality that didn’t exist before.’

Schoolchildren have gathered on the nondescript Manchester road where Booth and Horne are about to film a scene together. When they see Booth emerge in full geisha girl make-up, their jaws drop. It reminds you how daring Boy George must have been to parade these looks on the grey streets of London in 1981.

‘I think we’re all pretty boring now compared to what they were like,’ says Booth. ‘You’ve got Lady Gaga now, who’s a modern day George in a certain sense. But on the whole she’s seen as a bit poppy, whereas back then, with the punk spirit, wearing these flamboyant outfits was something to fight for.’

Whether Worried About the Boy can help resuscitate Boy George’s career, or even shift attention from the seedier chapters of his life, remains to be seen. What it does achieve is to make you wish we had a few more pop stars as reckless and colourful as him around today.

- Worried About the Boy is on Sunday on BBC Two at 9.00pm

Interesting. I'd like to see it.
It seems like kind of a whitewashing and less than an honest movie though. Boy George is actually one very nasty unpleasant bitter person.
A lot of the nice George that people saw in the 80's was a phony act.

I read about Boy George's "new" album on an 80's site. Apparently it's not a new album, but is just some solo tracks of his that have been released before and flopped that have been remixed along with a few tracks that have been floating around on the Internet for ages. It's some kind of standard generic dance album. If he's ever to have a comeback, you'd think he'd make more of an effort than throwing on a bunch of old tracks that all his hardcore fans have anyway. The general public isn't interested in him so an album would be only for his hardcore fans, so it seems ridiculous to release to them an album full of songs most of them already have. But then Boy George doesn't seem to think very logically.

Glindathegood said:

I take your point but it was really good, and showed George had a sence of humour even in the dark moments ... hope you get to see it!

Here's a link to a clip from YouTube....

great track....





great interview April 2010 ...funny!


[Edited 5/17/10 9:11am]

i don't know if this can be viewed outside uk, but i watched it this morning..it's a bit amateur & low budg but i really enjoyed it, took me back 2 the 80's & the craziness, the music.
there's a few very good one liners

http://www.bbc.co.uk/prog...s/b00sh5lt

Some of the acting - especially the lead actor - was first class, but the writing was pretty poor, and it failed to fill in a lot of gaps in the story.
I also didn't recognise the vulnerable Boy George they had created - he certainly doesn't come across like that in any of the interviews I have seen.



Plus the style was ripped off a lot of recent music biographies.


Shame, as it didn't really do justice to the main actor's talent - but I am sure he has a very bright future ahead of him.

really loved it, can you believe that the average age of the Blitz club crowd was 19!.

Dreamer2 said:

I'd like to see it too. From what I understand it portrays George just in the 80's when he was a little nicer and more vulnerable. I guess he was always bitchy, but I think he has become worse over the years. I loved 80's George, current George not as much.
George apparently has slammed it on his twitter page as lacking and badly written. What a surprise!

Interesting...I wonder if BBC America will show it?

I thought it was a good & interesting documentary/biopic about Boy George. They could have made it 2 parts though to add more about how Culture Club were formed and about their success etc. as they only briefly covered that in the final 5 or so minutes. Not sure if it'll work overseas, but here's the BBC iPlayer link to view the show here

Just another example of how drugs destroy lives.