Reclaiming Amy review – the Winehouse family set the record straight

This agonising, intimate programme gives family and friends’ side of the singer’s complicated story, as a riposte to Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy

It is now 10 years since Amy Winehouse’s death at the age of 27, and Reclaiming Amy (BBC Two) is a short, sad, sweet film that sees her family and friends give their side of the singer’s complicated story. It is narrated by her mother Janis, and does not attempt to hide its position as a riposte to Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy, which, Janis says, “claimed to tell the real story about our daughter”. The implication is that it did not, and certainly her father, Mitch, has reason to address some of the criticisms it levelled at him. Here, he claims he had a nervous breakdown after its release.

“The way Amy turned out wasn’t because she wasn’t raised right,” insists her lifelong friend, Michael, and we see plenty of clips of how she was raised. There are home videos and photographs of her on the day she was born, at three, at five. There is footage of her playing Rizzo in a school production of Grease, and her star power is plain to see even then. She practically blows the other Pink Ladies off the stage.

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