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See the real story of Suede

See the real story of Suede

Get the lowdown on The Insatiable Ones, Sky Arts’ portrait of the Britpop legends

Can’t Get Enough of Suede? A revealing new documentary charts the band’s highs and lows, songs and shows…

Suede: The Insatiable Ones, Saturday 24 November, 9pm Sky Arts/HD (CH 110/109). Also available for 30 days in Catch Up > Channels > Sky Arts

Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever the label, it is widely regarded as a seminal moment in British music history. It only really lasted for four years, between 1994 and 1998. But as any late 90s university student’s bedroom wall/vinyl collection/pub quiz knowledge will testify, Britpop’s legacy has long outlived that fleeting moment.

 

Alongside Britpop brawlers Oasis and Blur and avant-garde art kids Pulp, Suede were one of the bands at the centre of the musical, political and artistic movement. And now there’s a new feature-length documentary about the band’s history, The Insatiable Ones, airing on Sky Arts this week. It not only captures the band’s highs and lows at the peak of their powers, but also offers an insightful portrait of this memorable era.


The film arrives – somewhat terrifyingly – 25 years after the release of their enormously successful first record, Suede. Drawing on the band’s extensive personal archives alongside new interviews (including with Ricky Gervais, who was part of the group’s management team), it charts Suede’s birth, their success and excess, the strains that led to their split in 2003 and their recent reunion.

 

The one-off film was conceived by director Mike Christie, who has been working with the band since he produced a recording of their on-stage collaboration with film-maker Derek Jarman in 1993. In the words of lead vocalist Brett Anderson, “He’s been there with us almost from day one, pointing a damned camera in our faces.”

 

Anderson added: “It’s a film that grasps at the very essence of what the band is, charting the scruffy inglorious years of struggle, the vertiginous heights of success and the dank depths of self-destruction and hopefully emerges at the end of it all with some truths revealed and some myths destroyed.”

 

All that and some incredible songs. So revisit the past with this absorbing documentary on Sky Arts.

 

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