David Bowie: Five Years

Francis Whately's 2013 BBC documentary tells David Bowie's career through five pivotal years. The line from Ziggy Stardust to the soul period of Young Americans, on to the Thin White Duke and the regeneration in Berlin with Heroes, is assembled from previously unseen archive. The method is not chronological biography; each year is treated as the threshold of a change in identity. The most valuable element is the studio testimony of collaborators such as Tony Visconti, Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers and Robert Fripp, who give concrete detail about how the songs were built. There is no new interview with Bowie himself, so the portrait comes through other people's mouths. The film's limit is how quickly it passes over the career after 1980. Who it's for: Bowie listeners and viewers who enjoy documentaries about how records get made. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a comprehensive biography, or who will find the pace of the television documentary format shallow.