Trailer

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There are bands who split and reunite so often it stops meaning anything. And then there's The Smiths. Five years. Four albums. A string of hits that still sound like nothing else. And a break-up, in 1987, that's still raw forty years on. Presented by Steve Lamacq and Elizabeth Alker and built entirely from the BBC archive, this eight-part series goes back to the very beginning: a restless teenager from Stretford, a guitarist from Wythenshawe with a cassette under his arm, and the five extraordinary years that followed. How did it all go so right? And how did it go so wrong?