• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, June 13, 2023

The blue-collar strippers of “The Full Monty” are 25 years older, and they are fed up with what has happened to their world.

They are making their opinions known in a new, eight-part TV series -- also titled “The Full Monty” -- set in the present day and premiering Wednesday on Hulu.

As other older people can attest, much of the world looks and feels different today than it did in 1997, the year that “The Full Monty” movie was released and became a hit.

If these older characters in the TV show are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, then so be it. Everybody does it.

In the show, they complain about cancel culture, gender nomenclature and political correctness -- pretty much like everybody I know.

"Darren here got the heave-ho from work for calling someone ‘love’!” one of the men tells another in the café where they regularly meet.

"The fact is, I believe the term is 'cancelled'," clarifies Darren, who then explains: "I merely called a young lady [then stammers with uncertainty], er, girl, woman, a female, 'love' and that was it. Out the door."

“I call everybody 'love'!" says one of his friends, to which another friend answers, "Not anymore, my friend -- not anymore. The snowflakes have taken over the asylum! The political correctness Nazis ride abroad!"

Full disclosure: I have never seen the movie version of “The Full Monty,” but this presented no obstacle to enjoying the TV update -- or at least the first episode which I previewed on Monday. 

I had no previous familiarity with the “Full Monty” characters either, but those who fondly remember the “Full Monty” movie will be delighted to learn that the cast includes a number of returnees -- Mark Addy, Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Hugo Speer, Paul Barber, Steve Huison, Lesley Sharp and Wim Snape.

Original screenwriter Simon Beaufoy is back too, along with original executive producer Uberto Pasolini.

In Episode One, we catch up with them all. By all appearances, none of them (with one possible exception) held on to the money they made when they became unlikely stripping sensations 25 years previously.

As a result, most of them have lives that could certainly be improved by a new influx of cash. What will they do to restore themselves to financial health? 

The smart money is a return to their stripping success of yesteryear, but this plan was not yet in evidence in the portion of the show I previewed.

However, the boys are a bit older now, which might present a challenge for them in the fiercely competitive all-male strip team marketplace.

In the last 25 years, at least one of the characters has two children, one grown and one nearly grown, to whom he is estranged.

Thus, the show veers off occasionally from the travails of our heroes to these characters of the next generation. How they will fit into the stories of these senior strippers remains to be seen.

“The Full Monty” premieres on Wednesday (June 14) on Hulu.