Christmas TV for 2010 was a mixed festive bag. When I look at what I actually recorded on my PVR over the Xmas break, it looks like the only programmes on offer were random ‘comedy classics’ and a collection of films that no one else would bother watching (Groundhog Day anyone?) at any other time of year. Why do we still put up with this kind of shambolic scheduling on terrestrial TV in the UK? 

Anyway, one programme that did hook me in was the Take That documentary Look Back Don’t Stare. You couldn’t have missed it, they repeated it across the various ITV channels about four times which must have made it the most heavily marketed album (Progress) across TV over Xmas. The record label scored a real coup getting the album this amount of exposure and its not hard to see why. The reunion of the band is a great story and the band, along with the label and media, are milking it for everything it’s got.

So, as a promotional tool, you’d expect the documentary to be nothing more than a marketing platform for the said album and, to some extent, it mostly is. There’s a lot of familiar archive clips thrown in as the band answer familiar questions. We get taken through each of the new tracks and the reasons why they were written, cue the classic depictions of rehab and eventual resurrection. To make matters worse, a lot of the band banter is staged creating more than a few cringing moments as the band pretend scenes haven’t been discussed or rehearsed beforehand.

Take the scene below when Robbie meets the guys in the New York Studio for the ‘first time’ to discuss their thoughts on getting together. As Robbie starts to sing lines from ‘The Flood’ I’m left wondering if the programme producers think we’re all idiots. Maybe I am, I’ve been watching it for over ten minutes now.

However, as I kept watching, I found myself becoming gripped. I should have been reaching for the remote but it slowly began to dawn on me that the tracks on this album were actually very good. Although I was trying to resist it, this documentary was giving me every reason to buy the album. I love stories around music, all that drama and intrigue and as I began to listen to the songs I began to realise this was a very honest account of an album being created.  

So I have to forgive the documentary makers for pandering to the mainstream by creating these false scenes mentioned above – how else could you simply explain how a group of people start working on an album? The truth is probably a lot less interesting and complicated than a hour long programme can handle. And, let’s admit it, there’s nothing more boring than musicians talking about music.

Oh, and I also thought I saw Stuart Price in the studio with them, although I don’t think anyone would recognise him anyway.

Utterly brilliant.