The Full Monty is getting a TV spinoff — and that matters more than you’d think

polygon.com:

For younger film fans — people who weren’t watching adult dramas about economic downturns and the emotional struggles of working-class men way back in the 1990s — it’s a little hard to explain the impact of 1997’s The Full Monty. The British film, starring Trainspotting’s Robert Carlyle and longtime character actor Tom Wilkinson as unemployed steel-mill workers who set out to wow their community with a strip show, was a huge worldwide hit. It was part of a wave of British import comedies that helped kickstart the market for international cinema in the days before streaming services casually imported movies from around the world. Now, The Full Monty is getting a legacy TV-series spinoff, reuniting the original cast and following up on the characters’ lives. Here’s why that matters.

The Full Monty was the feel-good hit of 1997. The Oscar-winning dramedy turned a $3.5 million budget into a $250 million payday, and became Britain’s top-earning box-office hit of all time. (Titanic later supplanted it.) People who still remember the movie probably mostly recall the self-effacing blue-collar humor, built around DIY determination and the image of a group of down-on-their-luck workers trying to reclaim their self-esteem by doing something a little daring and playful. Or maybe they just remember the sweet but understated moment where those men, standing in line at the unemployment office, spontaneously break out into a little dance when Donna Summers’ “Hot Stuff” plays on the radio.

But while The Full Monty is a crowd-pleaser with a rousing ending (at that promised burlesque show, where the six main conspirators have promised to “go the full monty” by stripping completely), the film is also surprisingly dark and frank about the