John Fardy

Conversation that counts.

Michael, the biopic about legendary pop star Michael Jackson's life is in cinemas from today.

There has been well-documented controversy around the making of it, including reshoots and revisions.

And our very own presenter of Screen Time, John Fardy, has seen it.

And he joins me now.

John, the reviews are terrible.

They are.

And they're about to get even worse, I'm afraid.

So I just say at the start, like, this gives me no pleasure.

I was one of...

was bad on cassette and you know i till my my head as that other song goes i i loved them uh and was a massive fan even when it wasn't cool to be when all my pals were into the red hot chili peppers and metallica and blur or whatever i i adored michael jackson's music so it gives me no pleasure to you know uh

tear this apart, but I don't think we've any choice.

Park all the controversy for the second.

We'll come back to it.

Yeah, but first of all, this is like a bog-standard biopic that, like, the script...

I think I could have written it on the back of an envelope.

So it begins in Gary, Indiana in 1966, where famously the Jackson brothers were schooled and treated fairly horribly by a stage dad in the form of Joe Jackson, played by the great...

Oscar-nominated Coleman Domingo, who you think really should have known better.

So we have about 30 minutes of that.

Then fast forward, we're in 1978, 79, where Michael Jackson wants to break away and he's doing Off the Wall.