What will the guys do for an encore?
Hulu’s new eight-part comedy series The Full Monty picks up 25 years after the events of the 1997 movie The Full Monty, in which a crew of down-on-their-luck former steelworkers in Sheffield, England, try to get their mojo back as exotic dancers.
The core cast — including Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, Tom Wilkinson, Steve Huison, Hugo Speer, Paul Barber and Lesley Sharp — are back to reveal how their characters have fared so far in the 21st century.
Simon Beaufoy and Alice Nutter, the film’s writers, creators and executive producers, are also back to recapture the film’s tone and humor.
Carlyle’s character, Gaz, has managed to con his way through the past couple decades. “Life’s lumps and bumps haven’t really seemed to have affected him too much,” Carlyle says. “He’s kind of much the same guy. He has the heart the size of a bus.” And he hasn’t slowed down a bit. “Gaz is a hundred miles an hour. That takes a lot of energy, and that was an energy I had 25 years ago,” Carlyle says. “It was a lot more difficult this time to build that up. It was a joy to do that.”
Meanwhile, Dave (Addy) and wife Jean (Sharp) have some old regrets that are making cracks in their relationship. “They should’ve gone to couples therapy a long time ago,” Addy says. “It’s not all sweetness and light. These are real societal problems that they’re facing and trying to find a way of overcoming.”
The Full Monty premieres Wednesday, June 14, with all eight episodes available on Hulu.