Perhaps it’s understandable that biopics of singularly influential artists so rarely live up to the creative brio of their subjects. After all, it’d be a challenge for any work of art to recreate the lightning-in-a-bottle impact of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, even one whose raison d’être is primarily explaining how and why Never Mind the Bollocks came to exist.

FX’s six-episode miniseries Pistol does try valiantly to capture some of the band’s spirit in its frenetic, freewheeling style, courtesy of director Danny Boyle. But these efforts are in service of a narrative that, though often compelling, feels too well-trod to be revelatory. Far from the shock to the system that the band intended their music to be, Pistol feels like a cover album of tunes we already know by heart.

The opening minutes of the series establish 1970s Britain as the best of times and the worst of times through a smattering of clips from the era: sitcoms and David Bowie at the Odeon, violent uprisings and Queen Elizabeth II. Existing somewhere inside that roiling mess is a scrappy little band that, within the space of about five years, will evolve into the Sex Pistols, take the world by storm and then implode in spectacularly public fashion. The general shape of their arc will feel familiar regardless of a viewer’s knowledge of this specific band,…