Pistol, the limited series on the origins of Sex Pistols created by Craig Pearce and directed by Danny Boyle, premiered on May 31. Here’s how to watch it.
Where can you watch Pistol?
The series is streaming on Hulu in the US. It’s also available on Disney+ in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
What is Pistol about?
The series is based on Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol, a memoir written by guitarist Steve Jones. According to the official logline, the show centers around Jones, as he tells the story about the band’s beginnings. The logline reads, “The furious, raging storm at the center of this revolution are the Sex Pistols – and at the center of this series is Sex Pistols’ founding member and guitarist, Steve Jones. Jones’ hilarious, emotional and at times heart-breaking journey guides us through a kaleidoscopic telling of three of the most epic, chaotic and mucus-spattered years in the history of music…. This is the story of a band of spotty, noisy, working-class kids with ‘no future,’ who shook the boring, corrupt Establishment to its core, threatened to bring down the government and changed music and culture forever.”
Who stars in the series?
Toby Wallace, who’d previously starred in Australian indie film Babyteeth and the INXS biopic INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, plays Jones. Most actors playing the Sex Pistols members are newcomers: Anson Boon is Johnny Rotten, Louis Partridge is Sid Vicious, Jacob Slater is Paul Cook, and Christian Lees is Glen Matlock. The rest of the cast is rounded up with familiar faces, including Derry Girls’ Dylan Llewellyn as Wally Nightingale, The Witcher’s Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen, Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams as Pamela Rooke (a.k.a. Jordan), and Love, Actually’s Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Malcolm McLaren.
For those who want to explore the Sex Pistols’ music further, the newly-released The Sex Pistols: The Original Recordings offers 20 of the band’s most iconic recordings, spanning 1976 to 1978.