One of my favourite films last year was Bronson. It was about a disordered and sometimes violent man with creative impulses, based on a real person, and it was framed by the protagonist appearing on stage in the style of a music hall performer.

Fast forward a few months and we have Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Which features a disordered and sometimes violent man with creative impulses, based on a real person, and is framed by the protagonist appearing on stage in the style of a music hall performer. I’m not, incidentally, suggesting any skullduggery here. Merely a confluence of ideas. As Charles Fort commented, remarking on the proliferation of people coming up with steam engines in the nineteenth century, “It steam engines come steam engine time”. Besides, this film started shooting just after Bronson was released: no chance of cross-contamination then, though it’d be interesting to know what the makers of each film makes of the other.

There’s not a lot to choose between the two films, truth be told. They both feature charismatic performances by their lead actors, in this case Andy Serkis — of Gollum fame — portraying songwriter and entertainer Ian Dury. He does so with brilliance, capturing Dury’s charm and malevolence equally well, and his shift from sounding Cockney to a voice more reflective of his middle class upbringing.

Dury is a hopeless case, unable to function on his own. That’s nothing to do with his disability and everything to do with his self-indulgent and temperamental outlook. But there’s still an impish joy about him, which attracts first a wife, and then a girlfriend, both struggling to deal with a man who refuses to take responsibility for himself…or his children. He has a son and daughter, but she is pretty much overlooked while the film lavishes attention on the boy Baxter. I’d be interested to know where in the development process his sister’s story got abandoned, and for what reasons: it would be unsatisfactory even if these characters were fictional, the fact that they’re based on real people leaves too many questions hanging.

As well as his lovers, Dury has someone else he can’t do without in the form of musician and composer Chaz Jankel. It’s his way with a tune, and the competence of the new band, that takes Dury from the clodhopping dysfunctionality of his first group, Kilburn and the Highroads, to the chart success of The Blockheads.

With that success, things don’t get any better for the singer. He continues to be an unpleasant arsehole, a largely absent father, a selfish lover. All of which would be miserable if it weren’t for the stylistic devices adopted by writer Paul Viragh and director Mat Whitecross. The story has a basic forward movement, but at any given moment is likely to dip back into Dury’s past, sketching his childhood struggle with polio and the Dickensian hospital the disease led him to stay in, his relationship with his own brusque father, and any number of tantrums.

Alongside Ian’s story, it relates how his son Baxter grows up. Idolising his dad but unable to rely on him, Baxter becomes a witness to his father’s showbiz excesses, and it’s no surprise when he takes amphetamines at a young age, influenced by Ian’s manager. Turns out that having a shiftless and unreliable father doesn’t work wonders for your own development, a revelation that will come as no surprise to Carrie Fisher for one.

Never mind the psychology though, and relish a film that does a fine job of creating a three dimensional portrait of a minor British hero, whose understandable anger came through in his highly enjoyable art. So, as an appetiser for the film itself, here’s a couple of examples of Ian Dury & The Blockheads at their finest: Reasons to be Cheerful, Pt 3, and a live version of the classic Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.