Yahoo News ‘The Full Monty’ Review: FX/Hulu Sequel Is Flawed But Full of Unassuming Charm
Was there anyone, truly, who left The Full Monty wondering what these lads would be up to in three decades’ time?
The 1997 film was a complete work in itself, with few plot threads left dangling and no cinematic universe necessary. Hulu’s new sequel, also titled The Full Monty, doesn’t offer an obvious justification for its own existence either. There’s no inciting incident that brings us back to Sheffield, and no motivating goal once we’re there. The most explicit homage to the movie’s famous dance number plays (amusingly) like maybe the cast joked that they wouldn’t do the routine again if they had a gun to their heads.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
'The Full Monty' TV Series in the Works at Disney+, Original Cast to Return After 25 Years
Paul McCartney Says He Used AI to Produce a "Final" Beatles Song
Yet in spite of it all, the series works more often than not. The show (created by Simon Beaufoy, who also wrote the film) makes the bet that although the stripper plot might be what most people remember about The Full Monty, what most people liked about it was its spirit — the camaraderie between its characters, the easy sense of humor, the affectionate but not sugarcoated view of small-town life. It pays off as a sequel that, for all its shortcomings, retains much of its predecessor’s unassuming charm.
As a brief prologue notes, the eight-episode season picks up 26 years, seven prime ministers and eight Northern regeneration policies after the picture left off. In some ways, much has changed. Lomper (Steve Huison) is unhappy to learn in the premiere that today’s youth are offended by the name of the café he owns with his husband (Paul Clayton), especially as he hadn’t realized “Big Baps” was meant to be a double entendre to begin with. The old-timers who gather in the booths to grumble about “what’s wrong with this country,” like Gerald (Tom Wilkinson) and Darren (Miles Jupp, a new addition to the core gang), can commiserate. Meanwhile, Horse (Paul Barber), an even older old-timer, struggles to understand what “hashtag bloody Me Too” is to begin with.
In other regards, though, not much has changed at all. The city looks possibly even more run-down than it did back in the day. The shabby theater where the guys once put on their Chippendales-inspired act has long since crumbled into ruin. The local school, where Dave (Mark Addy) serves as caretaker and his wife (Lesley Sharp) as headmistress, is beset by structural damage and ever-stricter budget cuts. The local hospital, where Gaz (Robert Carlyle) works as a porter, is so severely understaffed that nurses have taken to over-medicating psych patients to make them easier to handle. Nor is life much easier for the next generation: Gaz’s teenage daughter, Destiny (Talitha Wing), is barely scraping by in class and struggling with an unstable home situation at her mom’s.
It’s a lot of problems for any one show to take on and, particularly in the first half of its season, The Full Monty‘s efforts to tackle them all can make it feel aimless. Episodes tend to focus on one character’s storyline at a time, so that a troubled kid (Aiden Cook) who dominates Dave’s attention in one chapter might rarely be mentioned again afterward. (Sometimes it’s just as well; I was perfectly happy to forget all about Lomper’s meandering pigeon-centric subplot once it wrapped up midway through the season.) At worst, the structure reduces minor characters to tokens and teachable moments — like the asylum seeker (Halima Ilter) who swoops in out of nowhere to teach Darren a lesson about opening up his mind and his heart, before all but vanishing into the background.
But even then, The Full Monty remains too good-natured to get all that cross with. The series is powered by a deep wellspring of affection for its characters, and an appreciation for the time-tested bonds between them. It’s never more heartening than when it’s rounding up the whole gang to throw together an unorthodox funeral or thwart a haphazard robbery. The returning cast, for their part, haven’t missed a step. Carlyle shrugs on Gaz’s schemer-with-a-heart-of-gold persona as comfortably as he might a battered leather jacket, while Addy and Sharp find affecting new depths together in a marriage fractured by loss. Special attention is also due to Barber, who imbues Horse’s befuddlement with the modern world with equal parts whimsy and poignancy.
The Full Monty is matter-of-fact about the injustices plaguing the community at its center. It lays out a world in which terrible tragedies befall kind people, young and old alike see mostly dead ends ahead, and the social safety net is riddled with holes large enough for entire lives to slip through. Like its cinematic predecessor, it’s not much interested in analyzing the roots of these problems or pretending these individuals might be able to fix these broken systems with enough gumption. When Horse faces the loss of his disability benefits, it’s all a sympathetic caseworker can do to offer him her own lunch after delivering the bad news.
But it does have faith in people, and the bonds that tie them together. It’s evident in small gestures, like the chocolate cake (topped with an unholy mountain of whipped cream) that Gaz brings Dave after a heartache, and big ones, like the foulmouthed “Revenge Choir” formed by a teacher (Sophie Stanton) to provide kids like Destiny a creative outlet after the school music program is cut. The Full Monty knows well that their care for each other can be imperfect and insufficient; it also knows that it’s the only dependable source of light and warmth in a cold world. Like its underdog characters, the series ultimately makes a case for itself simply by finding bits of joy and fun and compassion, however and wherever it can.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
