It’s an irritating fact that a lot of music documentaries - particularly ones that heavily involve their subjects as collaborators - have a habit of uncontrolled and insipid gushing. Every single milestone, however mundane, tends to be regarded through a lens of comical hyperbole. That mediocre early single that hardly anybody remembers instead becomes a defining moment that altered the course of arts and culture forever more; a man wearing a pair of basic leggings is immediately hailed as a subversive fashion icon. A parade of tenuously-linked talking heads are inevitably wheeled out somewhere along the way too, each attempting to one-up each other in the Overstatement Olympics.
Much to my profound relief, new Netflix documentary WHAM! unearths something far more interesting, despite being charismatically narrated by the duo themselves: Andrew Ridgeley and the late George Michael. Cleverly stitched together and drawing on a vast archive of audio recordings, their narrative does not shy away from reappraising the band’s past and even calling themselves out. The result is a genuinely illuminating film that adds huge depth to a band who - at the surface level, at least - are perhaps best known as the tiny-shorts wearing, Smash Hits-covering pop duo behind seasonal hits like Club Tropicana and Last Christmas.
