Boybands Forever, a major new documentary series starts tonight at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.

Watch, record or stream it with a Humax set-top box.

In the first episode, it’s 1990. Poll tax rioters are setting the nation’s capital ablaze, and prime minister Margaret Thatcher is being ousted by her own MPs. But a welcome distraction comes in the twinkly eyed form of a pop phenomenon which will define the decade: the boy band.

Taking a cue from the all-singing, all-dancing American pop act New Kids on the Block, the UK’s Take That and East 17 would dance and shimmy their way through the British pop charts in the first half of the decade, clearing the way for a long conga line of other handsome, crooning hunks.

In episode two, Tony Blair is heading for a landslide at the 1997 general election, signalling the start of a new political era. For the nation’s boy bands, change is also in the air. With the implosion of pioneers Take That, their rivals East 17 see the way clear to clean up in the charts.

But after a notorious radio interview in which frontman Brian Harvey confesses to taking 12 ecstasy pills in one night, the band Five, capitalising on the new ‘lad culture’ of the time, are rapidly catapulted into an unknown world of fame and idolatry.

The new series is proceeded by Boybands at the BBC, at 8.15pm. From Take That to 1D, JLS to BTS, the Backstreet Boys to Boyzone and East 17 to Westlife, this is a celebration of the groups, made up of frequently gorgeous guys, who’ve always played a vital role in pop’s dominance of modern music – sometimes not taken seriously, despite some seriously catchy songs, but loved forever by those who fell for them first time around.