Rebecca Brenneman/FX

The Sex Pistols had the right volatile mix at exactly the right time to blow up music, fashion and pop culture, and create a revolution from the debris.

As a functional music act, the band existed for less than three years and recorded only one album, 1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. But anthems like “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” incited a generation of young people to rebel against working-class conformity and embrace chaos.

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and Moulin Rouge! writer Craig Pearce lead the creative team behind six-part drama series Pistol (premiering May 31 on Hulu) based on Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones’ 2017 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol. The cast features Toby Wallace as Jones, Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen, Maisie Williams as Jordan, Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as manager Malcolm McLaren.

Boyle recalls the effect the Sex Pistols had on the “incredibly dull” Britain of the mid 1970s. “It wasn’t just kind of flat, it was kind of timed. You felt like you were young and then you were old, and there was nothing in between,” Boyle says. “What [the Pistols] did is they gave a sense of timelessness. They said, ‘This is yours.’ And what was different about them is they said that you can do whatever the @#$% you want with it. You can waste it, be vacant, be futile or not. It’s up to you. And nothing ever seemed to be the same again, especially for working‑class people.”