AT THE OUTSET of 2025, the chances of anyone spending much of their time thinking about Boyzone for basically any reason were pretty slim.

This being Ireland, we all have some idea of what the four surviving members of Ireland’s first boyband are up to these days. Those who spend a lot of time listening to the radio will know that Keith Duffy has made a real success out of selling tyres. Those who spend a lot of time on Instagram might know that Shane Lynch still loves his cars and posts regularly about his hardcore Christian faith. Ronan Keating recently helped to reclaim St Stephen’s Day in the name of Rockshore. Nobody knows much about Mikey Graham, but then nobody ever really did. 

Does it come as a surprise, then, that No Matter What- the three-part Sky documentary about the group – has been received with such interest and acclaim? Perhaps not.

The story of Boyzone is the tale of five men whose paths crossed by little more than chance – chosen for their singing voices or their bone structure – destined, all of a sudden, to be in each other’s lives forever. Really, it’s the same butterfly-effect logic that underpins almost every friendship any of us ever stumble upon. The group was, of course, rounded out by Stephen Gately, who died suddenly of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect in 2009 at the age of 33. While Gately is only heard here through archival interviews, it is his relationship with his bandmates and the absence left by his passing that is at the heart of the documentary. 

Regarding Gately, the documentary powerfully evokes the atmosphere of the 1990s during which toxic tabloid newspapers ran roughshod over the lives of young celebrities. It features an interview with Rav Singh, the journalist who wrote the Sun article through which Gately publicly announced his sexuality (after learning that the tabloids were going to out him anyway). 

The band all confirm that they were aware of Gately’s sexuality from the beginning, a secret they all protected at his behest. Keating speaks about the band organising their schedule and arrangements so that Gately could spend time with his then-partner Eloy De Jong without the press or public being alerted. At one point, Keating is brought to furious tears by the cover story which made the world aware of Gately’s sexuality.

In a time where much of the world’s attitudes towards LGBT rights and social equality at large appears to be regressing at a rapid clip, No Matter What serves as a stark reminder of the support and safety that men can offer to the vulnerable people in their lives. It is worth noting at this point that Shane Lynch, in recent years, has shared a post which called the Pride flag an ‘insult to God’ — a sentiment at odds with his personal relationship with Gately, though serving only further to highlight the complexity of a life in which five men are bound together by happenstance. 

The most moving footage in the documentary, after all, is the archival footage in which Gately refers to his four bandmates as his brothers, and speaks of having “four great friends to look after me”. In a recording from the band’s pre-comeback peace talks in 2006, Gately is openly delighted to be at a table with the other four once again. 

The band had originally broken at the turn of the millennium as Keating pursued his ambitions as a solo artist, and bitterness quickly set in. Jabs flew in the press, and Shane Lynch tells us that prior to the meeting that ended their hiatus he had been planning to hit Keating. However, when he finally saw his old friend, all he could do was hug him. It’s hard not to be struck by the power of this, the open acknowledgement of the dissonance that we all feel at some time or another. That friendships can fall apart in a haze of betrayal or frustration or confusion and yet be rebuilt from little more than the human impulse to reconnect with someone you once loved for whatever reason.

It’s evident that the band sees their 2007-2009 comeback era as the pinnacle. Mikey Graham tells interviewers that it was the first time he had truly felt part of the band, and they each speak of performing onstage together as an almost natural state of being. 

Keating, for his part, can still sound a little bit like a LinkedIn post come to life, speaking about his professionalism and his big ideas, and how his role in Boyzone was often that of a player-manager. He comes across as anxious, a man who spent much of his life obsessed with his own success — and the band’s second break-up also came about following his frustrations over Lynch and Duffy drinking before a show in Tokyo and performing drunk. But mostly, Keating comes across as a human being deeply affected by the relationships he’s shared with the other men in the band, and former manager Louis Walsh.

The contribution of Boyzone’s original manager lends a sense of scandal to the doc, shameless as Walsh is about his approach towards the care of these young men (Gately and Keating, for example, were both children when Boyzone began). Walsh speaks dispassionately about firing two original members of the group in part to let the others know that nobody was untouchable. He expresses no remorse over ignoring Mikey Graham for years at the height of the group. He readily admits his involvement in leveraging the tabloid media to publish baseless stories about Boyzone purely for publicity, having gone so far as to fabricate a plane crash for one scoop. 

When Walsh is shown the same newspaper cover that brought Keating to tears, he instead marvels with no shortage of pride that the story made it to page one. The Mayo man denies that he was the one who made the press aware of Gately’s sexuality, but he is unrepentant about his role in disseminating fake stories about the band’s members in order to keep their names and faces in the tabloids. 

In the third episode, the band acknowledges that Gately was ‘the glue’ that held the band together, and that they should not have continued to tour after his death. The shock and horror each of them can still recall upon learning of Gately’s death is deeply harrowing. They tell the story of holding a wake for Gately, just the five of them, and of how that night was the closest they ever came to recapturing the earliest years of their friendship. These are things that men often don’t discuss, or become clouded in cliche, and it is refreshing to see that trope subverted by four men from Dublin all now pretty deep into their 40s.

No Matter What is a good documentary about a popular music act, but it’s a great documentary about relationships between modern men, relationships which are so often brought down by a lack of communication, a lack of understanding, and competing ambitions. 

Friendships, relationships and connections of all kinds come and go and come again. We grow to hate the people we love and then we remember why we loved them all over again. It is something that all of us experience. It is no small thing to see it articulated so honestly.