Poly StyrenePhotography by Falcon Stuart
As a new film about the frontwoman of X-Ray Spex is released, Nick Levine speaks to the singer’s daughter and the documentary’s co-director Celeste Bell
March 05, 2021
This riveting documentary film doesn’t offer a revisionist take on
Poly Styrene – not exactly, anyway. As the thrillingly idiosyncratic singer driving X-Ray Spex, one of British punk’s most dynamic bands, her place in history is already assured. But it does reframe the late musician’s impact and legacy in a rather more modern way.
Billboard might have branded her “one of the least conventional frontpersons in rock history”, but after watching
Russell T Davies is a genuine pioneer. Since he created the groundbreaking gay drama
Queer as Folk in 1999, the Swansea-born writer has consistently elevated LGBTQ representation in mainstream TV. During his five-year tenure as
Doctor Who showrunner, he introduced the show’s first omnisexual character, Captain Jack Harkness, then launched super-queer spin-off series
Torchwood. Then in 2015, he created the ambitious sister series
Cucumber and
Now he’s written
It’s A Sin, a vibrant and deeply moving five-part series rooted in the 80s Aids crisis. Beginning in 1981, it tracks the disease’s tragic progress through the eyes of a close-knit friendship group living in a London flat they call the “Pink Palace”. As gay mates Ritchie (Olly Alexander), Roscoe (Omari Douglas), Ash (Nathaniel Curtis) and Colin (Callum Scott Howells), plus female friend Jill (Lydia West), lose friends and lovers to the disease, Davies paints a poignant portrait of how it comes to define the