‘Maybe if we would know the end of the story, there wouldn’t be any more story...’
Despite being an early Libertines obsessive, I’ve become a bit cynical about Pete Doherty and his band in recent years. While I still love loads of music from that era, I rarely return to the Libs aside from a track here and there and I’ve never really rated them much as a live band either. Something keeps me coming back to them, however. I’ve seen The Libertines many times over the years and I saw Pete live as recently as 2023 (and he was great on that occasion, actually). And so, I inevitably found myself tuning into Sky’s recent documentary Stranger in My Own Skin. And do you know what? It’s pretty great…
Charting the rise and fall and rise again of The Libertines but mostly through the prism of Doherty’s various addictions, Stranger in My Own Skin is a surprisingly candid and thoughtful lament on just how catastrophic drug abuse can become. Numerous sequences portray Doherty taking hard drugs and while these are genuinely upsetting and grim in places, they also ensure that this documentary is never a puff piece – even though the director is Doherty’s wife Katia de Vidas. Fans of Pete’s music will find plenty to enjoy here, there is some suitably chaotic live footage from various full band and solo gigs over the years, but the music is often secondary to the drugs. And we see the throes of addiction but also the rapture of recovery. This journey is charted through a video diary that the former Babyshambles frontman kept throughout his 10-month recovery period in Thailand. As with everything that Doherty does, it’s confessional, heart-on-sleeve stuff that occasionally tips over into self-parody, but it’s also hard to resist. He is clearly a vulnerable, damaged man and anyone who doesn’t want to see him get better must surely have their own demons to face.
Stranger in My Own Skin is a fascinating retelling of a musical icon but more importantly, it is a human story with a beating heart at its centre.