The Boat That Rocked (retitled Pirate Radio for U.S. release) is an ensemble comedy film, released in the UK on April 1, 2009 and November 13, 2009 in the US. Set in 1966, it tells a story about a fictitious pirate radio station broadcasting from a ship to the United Kingdom. The film was written and directed by Richard Curtis and made by Working Title Films for Universal Pictures. Principal photography started on March 4, 2008 on location off the southern English coast and ended in June 2008.
Carl (Tom Sturridge) arrives on the pirate radio ship, Radio Rock, after being sent to stay with the ship's Captain, his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy), to hopefully set his life on a different track after being expelled from school. Here he meets Radio Rock's crew of ramshackle disc jockeys, led by The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a buoyant rock-loving American, along with the suave and bawdy Dave (Nick Frost) and the naive but good hearted Simon (Chris O'Dowd). Also filling the airwaves is self proclaimed New Zealand "nut," Angus (Rhys Darby), the mysterious Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom) and the even more mysterious, reclusive and downright disillusioned late-night DJ Smooth Bob (Ralph Brown). Serving as the ship's crew are the shy lesbian cook Felicity (Katherine Parkinson) and radio assistants, Harold (Ike Hamilton) and the appropriately nicknamed Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke).
Dave wastes no time in introducing Carl to women, only for both of Carl's attempts to be foiled by Dave himself, including Carl's first crush, Quentin's niece, Marianne (Talulah Riley), although, by the end of the film, Carl and Marianne make up and get together. Simon also is unlucky in love, meeting and marrying the too-good-to-be-true Elenore (January Jones) only to find her affections are really placed with the returning "king of the airwaves", Gavin (Rhys Ifans). The Count objects to Gavin's antics with Elenore, leading to a clash of egos that ends in a truce after both suffer physical injuries jumping from the top of the ship's radio mast in a contest of courage.
Kevin, in an unusually insightful moment, points out to Carl that Radio Rock is clearly no place to be sent to clean up his act and suggests that the real reason Carl's mother sent him there is that his father, who he has never met, is among the crew, nominating Quentin as the most likely suspect. When his mother Charlotte (Emma Thompson) visits for Christmas, Carl asks her about Quentin, only for her to deny it. As she leaves the boat, Carl passes on a cryptic message from Smooth Bob ("Muddy Waters rocks"), which leads to the unexpected revelation that Bob, not Quentin, is Carl's father, something that throws both father and son.
Radio Rock's controversial on-air antics have ruffled the feathers of a government minister, Dormandy, (Kenneth Branagh), who instructs his subordinate Twatt (Jack Davenport) to find a way to take down pirate radio, despite its popularity among the pop hungry masses. After a couple of attempts to deprive the station of advertising funding backfire, Twatt encounters a news story of a fishing boat whose call for help failed to get through because of Radio Rock's powerful signal swamping the frequency and realises that this can be used to ban pirate radio for good. He proposes the creation of the Marine Offences Act, which passes through Parliament without any shown opposition.
With the Act due to come into force, the crew of Radio Rock choose to defy the act, for various different personal reasons, and continue to broadcast. Twatt leads a group of boats out into the North Sea to board the pirate ship and arrest the crew, only to find a fishing vessel moored there instead. Quentin has given the order to fire up the ship's aging engines and move their position. Unfortunately, the strain proved too much for the decrepit boat, which begins to sink as the DJs broadcast their position. The crew assemble on the upper deck, Carl rescuing the oblivious Bob from his cabin, leading to an apparent reconciliation between the pair, while the Count vows to continue broadcasting as long as possible. Dormandy forbids Twatt from sending out rescue craft, however, many fans have also heard the broadcast and come to rescue the crew as the ship sinks below the waves, with the Count emerging from the water at the very last minute.
The film concludes with captions stating that, despite the end of "the golden age of pirate radio", the dream lives on, with 299 music radio stations across the UK playing rock and pop music 24 hours a day, and that, forty years on, rock and roll is still going strong, ending with a montage of successful music albums covering the entire forty year period.
The film has received generally mixed reviews: it holds a 55% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 38 reviews. The Daily Telegraph credited the film with "some magical moments," but called it "muddled" and criticised its length. Time Out was also critical of the length and said the film was "disappointing".
The Hollywood Reporter ran the headline "Rock 'n' roll movie Boat just barely stays afloat," declaring the film too long to sustain interest. Total Film also criticised the film's length and comedy. Andrew Neil writing in the Observer, remarked that he was disappointed in the "contrived" storyline and the "unnecessarily perverted" history.
The Boat That Rocked is a fictitious comedy set in Britain during 1966 in an era when the BBC, the only UK mainland licensed radio broadcaster (Manx Radio had already been licensed to serve the Isle of Man), played little more than two hours of any kind of recorded music each week. In the story a pirate station called Radio Rock began broadcasting rock music twenty-four hours a day from a boat anchored off the coast of England in international waters. Hosted by a colourful band of disc-jockeys, it soon gains an audience of millions and angers the government in the process. While the story does have some relationship to real events it does not represent any specific station that was broadcasting to Britain in 1966, although Radio Caroline has a page on the subject.
The official synopsis of the film before release stated that it tells the fictional story about a group of DJs in 1966 who are at odds with a traditionalist British government that prefers to broadcast jazz. However, the film upon release says nothing about jazz on the BBC. Instead it compares the restricted and very limited non-recorded music output of the British Broadcasting Corporation's three radio services of 1966, with a very liberal station. But it is all about rock n' roll being heard. It should be noted that when offshore broadcasting began off England in 1964, the musical output and style of presentation of the first station (Radio Caroline), was very similar to the BBC Light Programme. That station broadcast mainly during the daytime at first and while the BBC relied heavily on orchestras and bands playing in its studios, Radio Caroline played a wide variety of recorded music interspersed with commercial advertising. The situation in Britain changed when Don Pierson of Texas created three offshore stations whose output was based upon American commercial radio. During the entire period from 1964 to 1967, British commercial radio attempted to maintain a highly respectable business image and the stations continued to play a wide variety of music (unlike the fictitious 'Radio Rock'.)
In the movie a nod is given to a character who might be seen as the late John Peel on Wonderful Radio London. Another is to Caroline and Radio One DJ Emperor Rosko in the form of Seymour Hoffman's The Count. Chris O'Dowd plays a DJ called Simon, the station's fictitious breakfast DJ. "The breakfast jock on Radio Caroline at the time was Tony Blackburn, so there's definitely an element of him in it [16]," says O'Dowd of his character. "And then I called in different Irish DJs that would have been contemporaries of Tony Blackburn at the time, a guy called Larry Gogan and a couple of other people."
The film uses a ship that is similar to the last vessel used by Radio Caroline from 1983 to 1990.
As Richard Curtis explained on the Dave Cash BBC Radio Kent show of 28 March 2009, this movie is not intended to be a depiction of the real story of offshore broadcasting to the United Kingdom as it took place in 1966. Curtis told the audience that someone should make such a movie but that his movie is for entertainment purposes only.
On the same show Cash interviewed Labour politician Tony Benn, who was the Postmaster General primarily responsible for the enactment of the Marine Offences Act that was responsible for the closure of the off-shore stations. Cash cited Professor Gilder's work (see References below) regarding Garner Ted Armstrong, and he asked Benn about the alleged links to a hidden American political agenda in financing the offshore stations. Benn denied knowledge but did not dismiss the possibility. Contrary to the free-wheeling style of the DJs on board the fictitious 'Radio Rock', Kenny Everett - one of the most zany DJs on Wonderful Radio London - had his employment terminated because he repeatedly made fun of the Armstrong broadcasts.
Radio 390 broadcast to an older audience in 1966 using a style of broadcasting that the BBC had previously used in the 1950s and then abandoned. All of the stations hoped to gain a license to come on land and therefore they all attempted to comply with all normal business regulations and society norms. In the end the BBC hired most of the out of work pirate radio DJs of the real era and Philip Birch who was Managing Director of Wonderful Radio London and its London sales office Radlon Sales, became the founding managing director of Piccadilly Radio one of Britain's most successful legal commercial stations.
European offshore commercial broadcasting had a long history before its advent off the UK. It began in the 1950s with a Danish station called Radio Mercur followed by stations off Sweden, and Belgium, and radio stations and a television station off the Netherlands. Other stations have also appeared off Israel, New Zealand and the United States of America. The inspiration for offshore broadcasting stations of the 1950s is linked to the Voice of America radio ship 'Courier' anchored off the Isle of Rhodes.
