Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wham!’ on Netflix, An Impressionistic Doc About The ‘80s Pop Sensation With Narration From George Michael and Andrew Ridgely

Wham! was never going to be middle-aged. This Netflix documentary, directed by Chris Smith (Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened) and featuring extensive first-person narration from Andrew Ridgeley and – in a true win for the benefit of archival recordings – the late George Michael, traces the pop duo’s brief four-year arc of celebrity, when they were young and gorgeous and carefree. There’s also a ton of archival footage here, of Wham! but also the life, culture, and vibe of the early 1980s, when the band put the boom boom into hearts, the jitterbug into brains, and took the world dancing, at least for a little while.   

WHAM!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: “When I was with Andrew,” George Michael says in Wham!, “we were absolutely determined to have a fantastic time.” And that was the two friends’ guiding principle right from the moment they met as 12-year-olds at Bushey Meads School in Hertfordshire. Ridgeley and a pre-stage name Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, who he nicknamed “Yog,” would write skits, gags, and comedy bits, mostly to crack each other up. A frustrated ska band was formed – Wham! literally has the tapes – and then they wrote “Wham Rap!” with a dance routine to go with it and nods to “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. It was 1981, and Andrew and Yog, just barely into their 20s, were on their way.

Wham! is built around voiceovers from Ridgely and Michael, the former via existing and new interviews, the latter fully archival. (Michael died in 2016 at age 53.) And it contains some incredibly deep visuals, like footage of a 19-year-old Michael dancing at the Soho club Le Beat Route, home videos produced by the band, and Wham! taking the chart show Top of the Pops by storm in 1983. And in another one of its archival gets, Wham! even builds its chapters around the detailed scrapbooks Ridgeley’s mother began to compile once the duo started becoming a thing. Press clippings, glossy cheesecake shots from teen magazines, and carefully annotated dates and descriptions of each stop on Wham!’s world takeover, which began in earnest in 1983 with Fantastic, their full-length debut, and a wildly successful English tour. Their bouncy singles influenced by soul music and the exuberance of youth were suddenly inescapable, and Ridgley and Michael became pin-up stars. “I think they’re fit and gorgeous!” a teenage girl gushes at one tour stop.  

Ridgeley and Michael quickly realized that George was the better songwriter between them. For example, even in his skeletal demo version of “Careless Whisper,” they knew it was a massive smash. But “whilst I was happy just being in a band,” Ridgeley says, “George needed recognition, affirmation of who he was.” And as they became more and more successful, releasing Make in Big! in 1984 and charting worldwide with “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “Everything She Wants,” it became increasingly difficult for Michael, who at that time was only out as gay to Andrew, to align his personal identity with all of the adulation of celebrity. “We could both see that his songwriting was taking him in a direction that was different than mine. But he was my best friend, and to be a part of evolution would be a great thing.” And Wham! rode the wave of super-stardom until 1986, when they orchestrated a farewell on their terms.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Paramount+ features George Michael: Freedom Uncut, a documentary with narration from Michael and its own wealth of rare archival material, plus interviews with celeb pals like Elton John and Liam Gallagher as well as Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Tatjana Patitz, and Linda Evangelista, the supermodels who co-starred in the classic David Fincher-directed music video for Michael’s “Freedom! 90.”  

Performance Worth Watching: The perspective of Andrew Ridgeley really holds Wham! together. When they were boys, he was the outgoing and strong one while George Michael was the insecure and followy one, and that dynamic appears throughout the photography and footage that makes up the doc. He is always having the best time ever alongside his best friend, with no thought of what might come next, an attitude that served the duo well when they declared the whole thing over in 1986. They’d achieved what they wanted, and Michael’s solo success as a singer and songwriter was a given. It had to end at some point, Ridgely says, resigned. “Wham! was never going to be middle-aged.” 

Memorable Dialogue: Once Wham! were signed to CBS Records, there was a push to record “Careless Whisper” properly, which led to George Michael visiting Alabama to cut it with Jerry Wexler and the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. “I was absolutely shitting myself,” Michael remembers of the session, and Wham! includes a bit of the ultimately unused version. 

Sex and Skin: Nothing direct, but Wham! engages with the hedonism both Ridgely and Michael refer to as one of Wham!’s core directives. The vigor of youth, whether in swimming pools in the south of France or in background footage from the “Last Christmas” music video shoot, where the wavy, floppy, and angle-cut hair styles are sublime. 

Our Take: Free of talking head interviews, either from its subjects directly or any number of peers and observers, Wham! is able to fully engage its impressionistic side as a documentary. It constructs itself from the bits and pieces of Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael’s memories, which it backs up with supporting archival footage, Ridgely’s mom’s endearing scrapbooking, and the overflowing coffers of popular culture visuals from an era that was witnessing a shift in attitude from the checked-out ‘70s to ‘80s pop sensibilities. Back then, the celebrity media industry we recognize today was still evolving, and it’s interesting to watch Ridgeley and Michael’s reactions to questions on a proto-Entertainment Tonight, their having to justify the trappings of pop music to square establishment journalists, and hear in retrospect how they felt at the time. What shines through is that they knew it was a lark, even in the moment, and were already observing their celebrity from a detached point of view. 

Wham! is only an hour and change. It’s breezy, full of the brightness and shiny plastic color palette of the era, from Wham!’s shouty red and canary yellow Fila tracksuits and their famous “Choose Life!” T-shirts from the “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” video, to the rainbow of gels that bathe the incredible pieces of old concert footage that appear here, and the collage of assembled glamor shots from Bop and Tiger Beat and the like. It’s colorful, fun, a little thoughtful, and ultimately fleeting, which suits a doc that frames four eventual years in the lifecycle of a pop group.     

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wham! is pretty definitive as a document not only of the ride that Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael took to worldwide fame, but of the bright and flashy era they did it in, when the 1980s were ready for its newest pop stars. It’s a celebration of Wham! living in the moment they created, and what came next is a story for another documentary.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges