Saturday 9pm – 10:30pm, BBC Two
The Riot Squad, the Konrads, the Buzz, the Lower Third: just some of the bands David Bowie performed with in his long search for success through the late 1960s. This glorious documentary weaves through that period, with eye-opening visuals (Bowie does mime! Badly!) and gorgeous, layered sounds from demos and interviews.
What comes across is how many times Bowie was knocked back: rejected by the BBC with one band; dropped by his record company; his first solo album peaking at number 125 in the charts. Every time he thought he’d got it made, the taste was… another flop.
His then girlfriend Hermione Farthingale suggests, “He wasn’t lost; he just wasn’t found, either.” She is interviewed for the first time here in a film no Bowie fan – no music fan of any sort, really – should miss, though it may lodge The Laughing Gnome in your head again.
