Danny Boyle will direct a six-part television drama about the rise of the iconic punk band, the Sex Pistols. Pistol will depict the seismic cultural shifts when the punk scene emerged on the streets of Britain in the mid-70s. ”Imagine breaking into the world of The Crown and Downton Abbey with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent,” the Trainspotting director told The Guardian. “It is the detonation point for British street culture where ordinary young people had the stage and vented their fury and their fashion, and everyone had to watch and listen and everyone feared them or followed them.”

The show will be based on Lonely Boy, the 2016 memoir by guitarist Steve Jones, whom Boyle has described as “a young, charming, illiterate kleptomaniac – a hero for the times... who became, in his own words, the ‘94th greatest guitarist of all time’.” 

Co-written by Craig Pearce and Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Pistol will follow on the trajectory of the young Sex Pistols from the West London council estates where they grew up, to the international infamy that surrounded them when they released their legendary album, Never Mind the Bollocks. 

Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, Nancy Spungen, and Chrissie Hynde are among the other significant characters whose roles in the Pistols’ story will be dramatised in the series. The American network FX also announced this week that the show will feature Babyteeth’s Toby Wallace as Jones himself, and Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams as the punk fashion icon, Jordan.