The Double Life of George Michael: Wake me up before you go witless at this doc with way too much drama

They saw the World Cup coming, didn’t they, those savvy programmers?

They clocked that it might not be the best time to lay out their greatest treats before us. If you don’t fancy footie, or buff-but-dumb Love Island, there isn’t an embarrassment of riches on TV just now, let’s admit.

Tonight’s big offering is a two-hour docudrama about George Michael, followed by an hour-long countdown towards The Nation’s Favourite George Michael Song.

As the title The Double Life of George Michael delicately hints, the programme’s producer/director Susannah Ward has adopted a fairly straightforward approach to her subject, suggesting that the star and the man were not one and the same, and that in particular not being able to come out until his mid-30s put unbearable pressures on him.

As over-arching explanations go, this will serve as well as any, although perhaps a bit binary? There are bigger problems with this programme. It opens by telling us “this film is based on real events and journalistic accounts” — a fine distinction — “but contains some elements of fictional dramatisation”.

Now this is not strictly true. The dramatisation is incessant, shameless and preposterous. Different actors play “Young George”, “Wham! George”, “Faith George” and “Older George” and we are nonetheless invited to think that what we are getting here is somehow a glimpse into the real George.

Channel 5 is a bit of a specialist in dramatic reconstructions, of course, notably of criminal activities, these rarely being filmed to satisfactory technical standards at the time. But this permissiveness has slipped into a working assumption that you can’t expect people to watch a documentary about anything if they can’t see everything mentioned. Re-enacted if need be. Like, what’s the difference?

Fact and fiction, that’s the difference, doc and drama. The Double Life of George Michael pushes this unhappy combination, this crunchy sandwich of chalk and cheese, to the limit. For, as drama, all these little scenes are lamentably indicative and over-explicitly scripted.

There’s George (not George) coming out to Andrew Ridgeley about being “a friend of Dorothy’s” — “What would be so bad about that?” “Well, you know…” There’s George responding to his lover Anselmo’s HIV diagnosis — “I just want you to live, I can’t live without you, baby.” There’s his final partner, Fadi Fahwaz, discovering his body on Christmas Day 2016 — “Happy Christmas!” Followed by the dawning realisation that all is not well. Must we see all this?

There is enough real footage of George, surely. And such films as Amy and the upcoming Whitney demonstrate just how eloquent documentaries can be when they eschew narration, let alone dramatisation, and use only original footage and personal testimony.

The Double Life of George Michael recruits some useful witnesses, including his manager Simon Napier-Bell, Paul Gambaccini and journalist and friend Lesley-Ann Jones. But then it adds one of those tombstone voiceovers, deadly verdicts delivered in caring tones (by Tracy-Ann Oberman). “Despite achieving his wildest dreams, the void George felt would only get worse.” “In a life marked by lows, losing music was George’s breaking point.” And so forth.

Taken together, these approaches ensure that this docudrama can’t possibly recognise that, despite all the disasters and addictions, and even his early death, George Michael’s life was richly fulfilled. More than almost anyone else’s. For that, there are the songs, at least.

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