Boybands Forever on BBC Two review: lays bare the pressures on pop acts in what remains a very current cautionary tale

The caller decease of Liam Payne casts an uncomfortable shadiness implicit the BBC’s caller docuseries Boybands Forever, astir Britain’s boyband craze of the 1990s and 2000s. 

The erstwhile One Direction prima fell to his decease past period from a edifice balcony successful Buenos Aires aged conscionable 31 with traces of alcohol, cocaine and a medicine antidepressant successful his system.

Although the BBC’s three-parter ends conscionable earlier One Direction were formed, it lays bare the pressures that were heaped upon manufactured popular acts by their svengali managers portion besides revealing the full disregard for these young heartthrobs’ intelligence health.

As Simon Cowell, who played a cardinal relation successful the emergence of 5ive and Westlife (both featured) and One Direction, says successful the show: “If you don’t privation [the workload that comes with boyband life] past beryllium an accountant. You can’t person it some ways.”

Many contributors – with 5ive’s Scott Robinson being the astir evident illustration – inactive transportation scars from their alleged glory days. Tears flow. And the bid opens with a clip of East 17’s Brian Harvey smashing up immoderate golden discs successful disgust astatine the euphony industry.

But events successful Argentina marque a mockery of the show’s assertion that it’s “a communicative of a faraway epoch successful popular euphony history”. Boybands Forever stands arsenic a precise existent cautionary tale.

Produced by husband-and-wife squad Louis Theroux and Nancy Strang, the bid is excellently made utilizing a substance of archive footage, talking heads and voiceover. The entree is tremendous; it features interviews with Robbie Williams, Blue, Damage, Westlife, 911 arsenic good arsenic East 17 and 5ive.

The archetypal changeable of each contributor – Williams speech – is inevitably met with a gasp of “That’s not…”, arsenic you effort to squint beyond the hairweaves and the paunches. We conscionable the puppet-masters too. As good arsenic Cowell, we perceive from Nigel Martin-Smith (Take That), a dishevelled Louis Walsh (Boyzone and Westlife), and others. Archive footage includes everything from audition tapes to Take That’s eye-popping archetypal video featuring the boys’ bums being massaged with jelly.

The champion occurrence of the chronological bid is the archetypal one, dealing with the rivalry betwixt Take That and East 17, the boyband equivalent of Blur vs Oasis. You hide however large these bands were, however voracious their pistillate fanbase became (“I’m going to wed X,” was a communal outcry ­– bless), and however all-powerful – some successful presumption of bigging them up and pulling them down – the tabloid and mag property were.

There are immoderate fascinating nuggets crossed the series: Russell Brand auditioned for 5ive; Beyoncé seemingly stole her trademark booty shingle from 911, and 5ive turned down the accidental to grounds Baby One More Time truthful Britney did it instead.

But the wide content is 1 of sadness. “At the ripe aged property of 50 I’ve figured retired however to bask [life],” Williams says astatine the end. Some radical volition ne'er get that chance.

Boybands Forever starts connected November 16 connected BBC Two and iPlayer