Simon Beaufoy Back in the mid-90s, I was unexpectedly kicking my heels in Sheffield. My girlfriend was in hospital and there wasn’t much to do in between visiting hours other than wander. It was a city literally being demolished in front of my eyes; there was a sort of grim theatricality to watching the wrecking ball take down another steel mill. Fifteen years of the Conservatives’ determination to allow heavy industry to collapse had left the north of England devastated. Men who had done the same job as their father and grandfather were now in a sort of shock, at a loss as to what to do with their lives, unsure of their place in the world.
The whole idea of male strippers wasn’t terribly interesting to me initially – the Chippendales were old news by then – until our astute producer, Uberto Pasolini, asked: “What’s happened to the British man that he’d take his clothes off for money? In Italy this would never happen!” Suddenly, everything clicked. I thought: what if we put it in the context of what was happening in Sheffield? What if we made taking your clothes off a metaphor for desperation, a loss of identity that working-class men from the steelworks had had stripped away from them by a government that appeared indifferent to the effects of their policies? Suddenly, we had comedy, politics and pathos all coalescing.
After the success of the film there was a lot of chatter about a follow-up, but I could never find a story that would better the original, my only criteria to write a sequel. For 20 years, nothing. Then, in the last few years, it became increasingly clear that we were in the same place again. This time, it was less visible than a wrecking ball, more insidious. The political destruction wreaked by successive governments wasn’t about destroying industry; it was the infrastructure of the country they’d come to asset-strip, slowly and incredibly successfully. Schools, hospitals, dental care, social care, mental health care, transport, the courts, water: all of the structures that allow people in need to function were now on the edge of collapse. So, the idea took shape of going back to Sheffield.
I thought a Full Monty TV series would be a great vehicle to not only see what’s still going wrong with the country, but also how things are changing in a good way. The shift in gender and sexuality expectations has completely changed since the original film. In the movie we had to cut away just before the two gay characters kiss and now we have these two gay characters married so long they’re sick of each other. How great is that? We’re not interested in their sexuality, so much as the fact that one of them has secretly spent 50 grand out of the joint account on a racing pigeon!
So I approached Alice, who I’ve been working with for many years and asked: “Do we really want to do this? Is this the right time?” We had as many misgivings as everyone else about revisiting these characters again.
Alice Nutter The misgivings were based on whether we really could make it relevant to this moment. I’d been a fan of the film, and in a lot of ways it was close to what we were espousing in [the band I was in] Chumbawamba: when all else fails, you need community and DIY to save yourself and the people around you. With the welfare safety net being scrapped, the original ethos of the film was utterly salient to now and we knew we could carry that through. And we also knew that we could do this without repeating ourselves and having the Monty men taking their clothes off.
Beaufoy We make a good team. We both come to stories from character. If I make a joke too many she’ll ask if we shouldn’t favour the truth over a gag and I sometimes have to call her out on her political rants if they are too … ranty. We balance each other out.
Nutter That’s called teaching me craft!
Beaufoy There was something interesting about seeing these guys, at another moment of big change, 25 years on. Now, our characters are scratching their heads trying to keep up with the pace of change in terms of how we speak about the world. There’s a legion of men who are trying to work out why certain words that were acceptable on Monday are no longer acceptable on Friday. Putting a spotlight on men – and I include myself in this – who are running to keep up with the lightning-fast linguistic evolution, that’s a ripe area to look at right now. And funny.
Nutter And it’s a symptom of a much deeper problem. My dad was a white, working-class Tory; he had jobs like petrol pump attendant. But no matter how low he was down the totem pole, he was always a white man, and that gave him more power than some other groups. What’s happened with this Brexit generation, is that people like my dad feel like the one area of power that they had has been taken away. They are bewildered because that’s really the only thing that was ever promised to them.
Beaufoy Bewilderment is a great word to use: our characters are bewildered. They’re not bad people; there isn’t a single bad character in the series. But they’re lost and flailing a bit. I think masculinity used to mean strength, and femininity used to mean weakness. They’re all scrambling around going: “Whoa, these things don’t mean this any more, where does that leave us?” The old prejudices provided a place of comfort for lots of men. Times are different.
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It’s unusual in that it doesn’t have any antagonists. In eight episodes of The Full Monty, the only villain is a state that has withdrawn its support and is watching people struggle. It’s full of characters who are like the vast majority of us: basically good, decent people trying to do their best and occasionally fucking up along the way, as we all do.
Nutter As well as telling working-class stories, it was important to us that the women in The Full Monty weren’t just wives. One of our lead characters, Destiny, is a force of nature. She’s powerful in a way that was impossible when I was growing up; my generation could be John Lennon’s girlfriend but not John Lennon. Destiny wouldn’t consider the role of sidekick an option. Despite the original film having a mostly male cast, unless you’re making a film about the trenches of the first world war there is no justification for that now.
Beaufoy In the years between the film and TV series, the big thing that has changed for the worse is privatisation. They privatised public services and then quietly withdrew from the areas that aren’t profitable. They left the most vulnerable exposed and alone. As one of the characters says: “At least back then, there was a queue when you went to sign on; people to talk to.” Back then there actually was a Job Club. People could get together in their unhappiness. There’s not even that any more. Now you’re clicking your computer alone in your bedroom. There’s an atomisation of society.
Nutter The benefit system is more punitive now. I’ve been on the dole and used it to do creative things, and it wasn’t a punishment the way it is now. If you’re unemployed now it’s your own fault. You’re the undeserving poor. That makes it OK for them to take people’s Pip [a disability benefit] away, leaving people to starve. And the myth is that these changes are somehow making the system work better, which is one of the things we deal with in the series. There’s a Soviet-style truth gap where all the shelves are empty but nobody will admit that the five-year plans aren’t just not working, they don’t even exist.
Beaufoy But it was important to tell these stories in ways that somehow offered hope. The state doesn’t care in the Full Monty world but the people do. And no matter how bad things are, people are resilient and kind. Humour gets you through. Hope prevails. And I really believe that. In life as in fiction.
The Full Monty airs on Disney+ from 14 June.
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