A Night in with Bros, review: sweet, rambling, and best watched with a bottle of wine
Luke Goss said last year that “Britain has never been proud of Bros”. Thirty years since their initial success, the Eighties pop sensations have finally been clutched to the nation’s hearts. A Night In With Bros (BBC Four) proved a surprisingly engaging, highly entertaining victory lap.
December’s reunion film After The Screaming Stops proved a sleeper hit for BBC Four, becoming a bona fide festive phenomenon on iPlayer and winning a Bafta. Now twin brothers Matt (hats, guitar, piano, vocals) and Luke Goss (bald head, band T-shirts, drums) returned to curate an entire evening of programming. For one night only, BBC stood for Bros Broadcasting Corporation.
The format may have been a hotchpotch – an occasionally clunky blend of music, chat, hit-and-miss VT packages and misty-eyed career retrospective – but the siblings carried it along with their admirable candour and guileless charm.
As they played a raucous live set in front of an intimate studio audience, styled like Later... With Jools Holland meets TFI Friday, Matt introduced a muscular take on Stevie Wonder’s Superstition with: “As many of you know, I made a conscious decision because of Stevie Wonder to not be superstitious” – referencing, of course, one of his notorious soundbites from After The Screaming Stops.
Indeed, the evening was studded with such knowing nods and arched eyebrows. Made by the same production company as the documentary, James Corden’s collaborators Fulwell 73, this programme smartly straddled the line between sincerity and self-awareness, thus appealing to loyal Brosettes and ironic sofa smartypantses alike.
The brothers were joined by KT Tunstall, a former Brosette (“I’m in a Bros sandwich!” she squealed as her teen dreams came true), for a rocky rendition of their 1988 hit I Quit. Honed by his residency in Las Vegas, Matt’s voice was impressively full-throated, neck veins bulging as he hit big-lunged notes.
They perched on a battered leather Chesterfield in their “retro den”– basically a set dressed with vintage hi-fi and Bros memorabilia (leather blouson present and correct but sadly no sign of Doc Martens adorned with Grolsch bottle tops) – to reminisce over archive clips and discuss their musical influences, from Ian Dury to Depeche Mode.
We got welcome glimpses of Craig Logan – the band’s unsung third member, cruelly nicknamed “Ken” by teen mags – who quit after their debut album. Logan has largely been written out of Bros history, not even meriting a mention in the documentary, so it was pleasing to be reminded they were once a trio.
Frontman Matt proved quite the raconteur, trotting out tales about waterskiing with U2 and being gifted frozen turkeys by fans. Leafing through a childhood photo album, both brothers welled up while discussing their late mother, sister and grandfather. They might be damaged by fame and grief, often slipping into therapy-speak, but it was impossible not to be moved by their palpable love for their family.
Backstage footage from recent gigs in Brixton and Belfast replayed the gasp-inducing moment when Matt fell 10ft off the stage. Textbook brotherly teasing saw Luke undercut the drama by comparing it to Del Boy Trotter falling through the bar on Only Fools & Horses. There were fleeting glimpses of the brother’s famously fractious relationship but mainly they were sweetly tactile and affectionate.
In a mini-talkshow segment, Matt interviewed the rather random trio of comedian Katherine Ryan, boxer Frank Bruno and athlete Sir Mo Farah. His device of presenting each guest with a crystal glass and asking them to name it after someone they missed was long-winded but yielded poignant results, particularly when it prompted Farah to discuss the tragic death of his training partner Sam Haughian at the tender age of 24.
Viewers waiting for more Matt bon mots won’t have been disappointed. Highlights included “We became somewhat friends with Terry Wogan” and this rambling riddle: “The people who care, care. We can’t change who doesn’t care and quite honestly, I don’t care about who doesn’t care. What I do care about is the people that do care.” Good luck unravelling that one.
However, he won over even the most cynical viewer with his puppyish enthusiasm and disarmingly salty sense of humour. Instead it was Luke who induced most of the cringes.
Footage from Bradford Literature Festival, where Luke was plugging his self-help book Desert Conversation (based on four days of meditation beside the Joshua Tree, naturally), was a feast of New Age psychobabble. “Trolls have become more powerful than God,” apparently, and “We need to come together as a global community before we’re invaded by an alien force.” Bear that in mind, world leaders.
When Luke sat down with his Hollywood buddies to discuss his career in film, it became embarrassingly evident that there wasn’t much to say about a CV comprising cheesy straight-to-video thrillers with titles like Mississippi Murder, Annihilation Earth and The Dead Undead. Nope, me neither.
All this was followed by another chance to see After The Screaming Stops, the much-discussed cult film charting their reunion after 28 years apart – dubbed “Spinal Tap meets Smash Hits” and “a real-life version of David Brent: Life on the Road” by critics. On repeat viewing, the meme-friendly one-liners still tickled (conkers! roadsweepers! rectangles!) but what also emerged was a raw, affecting and ultimately uplifting portrait of a band of brothers.
By now we were well into the wee small hours and the twins rounded off the night by introducing archive documentaries about their respective musical heroes. Now a swinging casino crooner himself, Matt went for Ol' Blue Eyes with Sinatra: All Or Nothing at All, while Luke rocked out with Robert Plant: By Myself.
The brothers had recommended watching with a bottle of wine to hand and they weren’t wrong. Some strong coffee wouldn’t have gone amiss either. It was a shame this five-hour epic didn’t begin at 8pm, rather than 10pm.
Still, with this eclectic and endearing evening, Bros might just have completed their roundabout rehabilitation from naff figures of fun to belated national treasures. "Thank you for making us feel at H.O.M.E," concluded Matt. After all, the people who care, care.
