David Gilmour: Wider Horizons, TV review: Whatever happened to sex, drugs and rock’n’roll?

“Who is David Gilmour?” was the opening gambit from Alan Yentob as he ambled alongside the Pink Floyd musician in one of many strolls they took together through the English countryside during David Gilmour: Wider Horizons. Sadly, nearly an hour-and-a-quarter later we were still waiting for a definitive answer to this question. But one thing we did learn was that he really didn’t like his parents – and by all accounts, they didn’t think much of him either.

Sent away to boarding school in the UK aged five after his father, an academic, accepted a job in America, the young Gilmour clearly developed a resentment that continues to burn today. His parents lasted six months in the US before they returned to Cambridge. Unfortunately, they didn’t see fit to return David and his two siblings to the family home and they languished in the boarding school throughout the Christmas holidays and into the next two terms without so much as a weekend visit. His parents later emigrated to the US when Gilmour was 18 – he‘s still bitter about that too – and missed his 16th birthday because they were holidaying on the other side of the Atlantic. All of these details were spat out by the usually softly spoken musician.

He talked about his late mother becoming more maternal in her old age. “I rather felt it was too late for all that,” he concluded.

This was an incredibly sad detail, revealed almost accidentally, in what was otherwise a very boring but extremely well-polished portrait of a rock star. His lovely house in the Sussex countryside was seemingly constantly filled with family and friends. His camera-friendly children wandered in and out of the shots all smiles and cuddles while his partner, the writer and lyricist Polly Samson, talked constantly of how happy they all are.

We saw his son recording tracks for Gilmour’s new album, his daughter teaching herself the ukulele and regular family outings with a lot of touching and cooing. All while Yentob lolled around in the background trying to look like part of the portrait. It was an Instagram-worthy documentary – a perfect life, a perfect family, a perfect floating recording studio on the side of the Thames.

Yentob lounged around on a picnic blanket with the family, he joined them for a late-night sing-song around the camp fire and – perhaps most outrageously – flew out to Croatia (presumably at the taxpayers’ expense) so he could sit on a flight of stairs with his mate Dave. The whole thing was mind-numbingly dull.

The filming, presumably aiming for artistic, came across as odd. Sometimes the camera angle changed unexpectedly mid-shot. At others times, a camera followed Gilmour through the long grass in a Fast Show style (“Ooh mushrooms,” he exclaimed, bending down for a closer look) while off-screen Yentob asked a series of non-probing questions. Then it was back to the studio to pore over his record and guitar collection (and giant A3 posters of himself). The whole effect was nauseating. This was nothing more than a narcissistic, self-indulgent promo-reel. What ever happened to sex, drugs and rock’n’roll?