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Scriptwriter Joe Penhall has an eye both for historical-hindsight gags (when Ray has a breakdown, his manager berates him: “You’d never see John Lennon lying around in bed for several days doing nothing”) and finding motifs that resonate today as then, such as the uneasy but somehow practical relationship between this quartet of Muswell Hill boys and their patrician managers. Penhall stitches dialogue and song together seamlessly, although in truth so many of the songs (only about half here being proper “greatest hits” selections) could almost have been written for this very purpose. Davies père’s protests about the family’s poverty slides into “Dead End Street”, and “Stop Your Sobbing” becomes an imprecation at Ray’s awkward wedding.
Climactically, all the relationships – fraternal, marital and with the other band members Pete and Mick – are beautifully resolved in a sequence which shows the gradual construction of “Waterloo Sunset”. I’d have thought that, in my fifties, I ought to be able to hear this song without tears welling up. Some chance; I defy anyone to resist it, or this show.