It’s been nearly three decades since The Full Monty, nominally about male strippers but really about male mental health, poverty, and austerity, grabbed the globe by storm.
With energy costs skyrocketing and the cost-of-living problem, it’s astonishing and disheartening that nothing has changed in the last three decades, and the TV series relaunch isn’t shy about addressing politics.
The eight-part series, which is available on Disney Plus, follows the original ensemble, which includes Robert Carlyle (Gaz), Mark Addy (Dave), Lesley Sharp (Jean), Steve Huison (Lomper), and other future performers such as Talitha Wing (Dez), as they deal with life in the UK.
The TV series is set in the current day, years after Gaz, Dave, and the rest of the group famously stripped to You Can Leave Your Hat On to finance Gaz’s child support for his son Nathan (Wim Snape), and the necessity for any wild plans to live is just as apparent.
Before the premiere of The Full Monty, Robert, 62, spoke about the most ‘heartbreaking’ sequence in the TV series, which deals with arts budget cuts and catastrophic welfare cuts.
‘Horse, Paul Barber’s character, he’s in the worst situation of everyone,’ he says of the character, who reprises his part.And it’s a very tragic story.
‘There are a lot of things that Horse has gone through, which I think will speak to a lot of people in the country, especially the older generation, who feel disconnected from the world.
Robert teased a ‘wonderful’ sequence in the TV show that features writer Simon Beaufoy and co-writer Alice Nutter at their ‘very best.’
‘Because there’s a slightly comic value to it,’ the Trainspotter actor explained. ‘As soon as you start to laugh you’re thinking, “Should I do this? This isn’t funny.”
‘It’s a really, really heart-wrenching story that is beautifully written. I think it’s The Full Monty at its absolute best.’
The 1997 film, directed by Peter Cattaneo, was an instant blockbuster, earning both a Bafta and an Oscar and becoming the highest-grossing picture ever filmed in the UK at the time.
The Full Monty is available to stream on Disney Plus on Wednesday.
