Good Vibrations (2013), BBCiPlayer, written by Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson and directed by Lisa Barros D'Sa.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05569p9/good-vibrations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Hooley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Vibrations_(film)

I was between books and wondering what shite to watch. I was going to say on the telly, but that’s as odd as admitting to owning a Singers Sewing Machine.  Films and documentaries. Stuff that makes you think without really having to think. Good Vibrations was a bit of both and simply wonderful.

It sorta tells the story of Terri Hooley (Richard Dormer). In the opening scenes, he loses an eye in a a childhood accident. Fast forward and he’s in a rundown and empty pub around 1970, with a turntable and set with a sign that proclaims himself ‘Belfast’s Number 1, DJ’.  

The only bum note is Ruth (Jodie Whittaker) who stages a one-woman love in. The soon to be Mrs Hooley is so out of his league that opening a record shop in the ‘most bombed half-mile in Europe’ seems a good bet, in comparison.

Hooley is asked to step away when a RUC officer attempts to pin an underage-drinking offence on a young girl at a punk gig. ‘Don’t you know there’s a civil war out there?’ Hooley said and steps closer, getting in the officer’s face.

He’s saved literally and metaphorically by the intervention of the band he’s come to watch. Music is his religion. Good Vibrations become his band. He’s up and running. Neither money nor bankruptcy nor gobshite can stop him spreading the word. There’s more to Northern Ireland than bombs and bullets.

Good Vibrations his record shop was a reminder that vision and creativity find fertile soil in the most surprising of places.

The ignorance of outsiders is staggering but not surprising. His people don’t know what to do with themselves or him either.

His great crusade to take the music to London is yet another failure.

Yet…Teenage Kicks emerges, championed by that arbiter of the good and the true in music, John Peel on BBC. So good, he played it twice on his show.

The Undertones became big enough to crack the top ten singles chart.

Hooley, well, that’s another story. Success isn’t always about having the biggest car and the biggest  house. He stayed true to what he knew.

I loved his reply to a campaign to have him elected as the Mayor of Belfast in 2010: ‘There are enough fools in Belfast City Hall, they don't need another one.’  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVBVVGD6