For anyone who saw Oasis’s record-breaking comeback tour last year, the new documentary Don’t Look Back in Anger will prove an incredibly moving watch. Following the biggest British band of the 90s around the world in 2025, Steven Knight – also the creator of Peaky Blinders – brilliantly captures the euphoria and unity of fans at the reunion tour they never thought they’d see. I got goosebumps more than once watching the electrifying concert footage and the emotional reaction from fans, particularly from the gig I saw – the utterly brilliant opening night in Cardiff.
From Brazil to Argentina to South Korea, Knight finds young people who have latched on to these 30-year-old songs about hopes and dreams, written in far-away Manchester. Some stories are more interesting than others, but the point is made: Oasis have global reach – they are a band of the people like no other.
For a documentary that was supposed to tell the story of their reunion, though, there are key questions left unanswered. Mainly: how, when and why did this all happen?
After a potted-history montage of their 90s rise and Noughties fallout, and that fateful fight in Paris in 2009, we cut straight to rehearsals six weeks before opening night. The rehearsal footage is enlightening. Noel is band leader and hard taskmaster; Liam’s entrance to the room weeks into the process is genuinely tense: no hugs, handshakes or acknowledgments, the ice broken by Liam’s annoyance at the soundproof panels on Joey Wartonker’s drum kit. “It’s giving me the hump,” he says. “I’m not sure if Our Kid is enjoying himself,” Noel wonders later to the band.
