SHEFFIELD OF DREAMS

Almost 30 years after the barnstorming original surpassed all expectations, broke box-office records and earned four Oscar nominations, THE FULL MONTY is returning as a TV series. Can Gaz and co. rustle up another underdog hit while keeping their clothes on? Total Film meets the team to strip back the concept behind the new show.

- GABRIEL TATE

Just once, that’s all. Just tonight.’ Back in 1997, Tom Wilkinson’s unemployed foreman Gerald reluctantly consented to joining fellow jobseekers Dave (Mark Addy), Horse (Paul Barber), Guy (Hugo Speer), Lomper (Steve Huison) and ringleader Gaz (Robert Carlyle) in an unlikely venture: a one-off, money-spinning strip show at a working men’s club in front of an audience of local women. They would, as the eponymous film’s unforgettable freeze-frame climax confirmed, be going The Full Monty.

Made for £3m and reaping over £200m worldwide, The Full Monty wasn’t just the highest-grossing film ever at the British box office (albeit for just a few months, before a little film called Titanic left harbour), but a genuine cultural phenomenon that transformed the careers of all concerned, spawned a thousand unofficial spin-offs and even saw the then-Prince Charles joining Speer to recreate the famous Hot Stuff dole-queue dance.

For a long time, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy agreed with Gerald: just once, that’s all.

‘I’d put a big full stop on it,’ he says. ‘Lots of money was dangled in front of me [for a sequel] and I said no many times, not out of any kind of principle so much as not having a good story to tell. I always knew I could never better the end of the film.’

Addy concurs: ‘All they’ve achieved is taking their clothes off in front of a lot of people that live in the same town. They haven’t magically found employment, so I don’t know where a sequel could have taken the story.’

A 2013 stage adaptation helped Beaufoy mellow towards an onscreen reunion, and he signed up Alice Nutter, his collaborator on Gettys series Trust, as co-writer.