Anarchy on the TV

How do you make a drama about the godfathers of punk when their lead singer is taking you to court and your cast has barely heard of them? Director Danny Boyle reveals all

- Alexis Petridis

DANNY BOYLE IS SITTING IN HIS D KITCHEN sounding faintly surprised that his latest project has been made at all. "It's so not the story that everybody wants to be told," he says, "but it is the story that should be told." Pistol, a six-part miniseries, certainly isn't the first drama about the Sex Pistols. There was Alex Cox's 1986 movie Sid and Nancy, as well as The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle - a game attempt by the band's manager Malcolm McLaren to claim the whole thing was a brilliantly orchestrated money-making scheme. But Boyle's is by far the most ambitious.

It is based on Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, Steve Jones's fantastic, occasionally harrowing autobiography, which takes readers from the guitarist's horrendous childhood (he was sexually abused by his stepfather) to that infamous, expletive-filled appearance the band made on ITV's Today show. It then covers the notoriety that followed, including the band's messy collapse during a US tour and the horrific aftermath, which culminated in bassist Sid Vicious dying of a heroin overdose while on bail, charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

The series features a high-profile young cast: Maisie Williams, best known as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, plays Jordan, the fearsome sales assistant in McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's boutique Sex; while Louis Partridge, star of Netflix's hugely successful Enola Holmes, is Sid Vicious. Anson Boon doesn't look much like Johnny Rotten, but he's got his voice and mannerisms eerily accurate; likewise Thomas Brodie-Sangster as McLaren. Moreover, it's funded - and here's an image for anyone who can remember the furore the Sex Pistols once caused - by Disney.