Director Michael Cumming Stars Robert Lloyd, Stewart Lee UK 2020 Language English 1hr 30mins Colour (mostly)

It’s almost become a running joke that every musician who ever got as far as putting out an album – and some who didn’t even manage that – has had a documentary made about them. It’s a relentless preserving and retelling of the pop past, usually made possible by crowdfunding. Pledge your tenner and help make sure somebody on screen will argue that band you loved when you were 15 really, really mattered… even if their debut album sold 600 copies.

Many of these films contain interesting nuggets, good stories or anecdotes and sometimes fascinating bits of archive found on a random VHS tape somewhere. But as pieces of film-making, they are often weak, hampered by too much respect for their subjects or just a lack of cinematic nous.

King Rocker, telling the story of minor punk/post-punk/indie figure Robert Lloyd, is different. It was made on a budget that’s modest even by the standards of films about very obscure musicians. But the level of care and skill and wit are on a level far above what you normally get. That’s because this is a collaboration between veteran British TV comedy director Micheal Cumming – whose credits include Brass Eye and Toast Of London – and Stewart Lee. If you’ve ever seen Lee’s stand-up – live or on his BBC TV series – you’ll rightly anticipate that there will something of a shaggy-dog story structure to it. So we start not with Lloyd and his various bands but with a statue of King Kong that stood in the centre of Birmingham for a few months in the early 1970s, and then periodically follow its (mis)adventures since.

And if you’ve watched many music (or art or skateboarding or fashion etc) documentaries, you will know that there’s a tendency for any famous people who have been willing to be interviewed – however tangential they are to the story – to get lots of screen time. Here, by contrast, we get someone who was a superstar appear essentially to supply a punchline. And while many music docs leave their interviewees’ claims unchallenged, even when the quickest fact-check will show they are talking nonsense, Cumming and Lee highlight and enjoy that not everyone remembers events the same way.

All of which is to say that if you’ve never heard of Robert Lloyd or his punk band The Prefects or his next group The Nightingales, there’s a lot to appreciate here. What you will need, though, is high tolerance for middle-aged blokes talking, because a lot of the film is made up of conversations between Lloyd and Lee in caffs and pubs, up on a snowy moor as well as at the car dealership where Lloyd spent his nights when he was sleeping rough in the late 1970s.

It’s often funny but there are tough moments too. There are also things not really gone into too closely: for instance, Lloyd had a stroke a few years ago – we see him sorting out his many daily pills, but it feels like we also see him drinking a lot of pints through the film.

But if you are comfortable with that stuff, then this is warmly recommended, because it’s not just an act of loving fandom, it’s actually an excellent film.