(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 5 April 2002

Paul Morley
I thought is it going to be Oliver Stone or Carry on Film? It is kind of both. Even when they get it wrong, there is something fabulously right about it as well. In a way, they couldn't fail. It is a great British story.

The genius thing in a way, also the most horrible, is to base it around Tony Wilson. The horrible self centred Mancunian that everybody loves to hate and hates to love. In a way, that it is the genius because you didn't expect it. It's about Tony Wilson who is like a post-modern Richard Madley, the kind of British story that should be told. They don't often get told.

Elaine Showalter
I'm totally an outsider. It could not be further from home for me. But I loved it. I don't care whether it is true or not. I took it as mythic. I never heard of the Happy Mondays. But Steve Coogan is tremendous in this. It is a film that would go over anywhere.

James Patterson
It is like a stoned Oliver Stone movie. Goes back and forth. The pigeon scene, which will be infamous, it sorts of starts documentary but then goes on the point of the view of pigeons. It wants to have it both ways.

...To me, the interesting thing is conceptually trying to capture both the myth and reality in one thing.