Trailer

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?


The full series is available exclusively on BBC Sounds.