It’s 1997. MMMBop, by Hanson, is in the charts, the Soviet Union has crumbled and a glorious age of posthistoric prosperity has begun. In the UK, people are obsessed with the mating of the famous heterosexuals Posh and Becks. Posh, aka Victoria Adams, is a registered Spice Girl. Along with her spice siblings – Scary, Sporty, Baby, Sleepy, Dopey, Mick and Titch – she introduced a generation to pop bangers, shouting while standing on tables, and stealth feminism. David Beckham, her boyfriend, is a famous sportsman. “What sort of sportsman? I’ve never heard of him. Is he a golfsman? A dartsographer? A footballist?” He is the latter. He has a very specific skill: he knows how to hoof an inflated orb into a mesh of woven string.
Beckham does this with his lower limbs and, sometimes, his skull. He doesn’t use his upper limbs even though these are the limbs that frequently win the award for “best limb”. It’s peculiar. Adam Smith never foresaw this level of specialisation, and there wouldn’t have been much call for it in the past. If Beckham was a hunter-gatherer his friends would say: “That’s lovely, David, but perhaps you could also pick some berries so we can survive winter?”
The new Netflix series Beckham is ably directed by Fisher Stevens, who played Hugo in the rich-person drama Succession. It was made with the co-operation of his subject, who regularly appears in full-faced close-up, surveying his life, sometimes accompanied by Victoria, with whom he bickers in an entertaining but stagy fashion. Many of his famous friends also appear, usually discussing the best way to hoof an orb.
There is, unsurprisingly, lots of football. But don’t worry, they’ve cut out the boring bits. It’s just goals. It actually looks quite easy. I bet if I did football I’d be really good. Sadly, I can’t move much these days, because I don’t want to.
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A noteworthy aspect of Fisher’s style is that he frequently reacts from behind the camera with an American strain of awe that’s alien to the people of these islands, who prefer to be unimpressed by fame. Like Succession, Beckham also has a stately orchestral soundtrack. That’s the go-to sound of contemporary celebrity documentary (see also: Sky’s House of Kardashian). It gives them gravitas when their ups and downs would often be more appropriately soundtracked by a slide whistle (see: examples below).
One minute he has curtain-shaped hair, as though his angelic face were a stage, the next he has a mohawk that transforms his head into an exclamation mark
And so we learn about Becks’s humble roots and his father’s early years encouragement and training. “We started giving him Guinness and a raw egg,” his dad says, and I worry that finally, at the age of 48, David Beckham might be removed by social services. When Posh and Becks get together, he’s riding high with Manchester United and she’s in the charts (slide whistle goes up). She seems worldly and protective. He is, in contrast, a sweet summer child. He struggles when they’re apart (slide whistle goes down). But they’re soon the most famous people on earth (slide whistle goes up).
You can tell the passing of time in football by the changing size of Beckham’s soccer pants. At times his britches are voluminous balloons atop his legs; at others he is clad in little but a breechclout. (Please read my forthcoming book, Big Pants, Little Pants: A History of Soccer.) His haircuts soon become newsworthy. One minute he has curtain-shaped hair, as though his angelic face were a stage, the next he has a mohawk that transforms his head into an exclamation mark. Momentarily he even seems to have a comb-over, but that’s just footage of his father’s idol, Bobby Charlton. Charlton, whose wispy combed-over strands were like a tender wave crashing across a calm bald sea, had the best football haircut ever. Beckham could make this magnificent do work, too, if he wished.
As we watch, Posh and Becks pioneer the notion of celebrity as corporate brand (slide whistle goes up), but there are questions about his commitment to football (slide whistle goes down). He gets a disastrous red card at the World Cup and rouses his nation’s ire. People throw televisions out of windows, a publican executes an effigy of him (publicans are a reliable measure of Britain’s psychological state) and the family are besieged by paparazzi (slide whistle goes way down). But then he redeems himself at Manchester United, and suddenly there are Christlike images of him on magazine covers again (slide whistle goes up).
Brooklyn is born (followed by Cruise and Romeo; the Beckhams also pioneered naming children after random nouns, verbs and fictional characters, and this is why so many of your children’s friends have names like Spoon, Vindicate and Megatron). They marry in an Irish castle (Luttrellstown) bedecked in purple and seated on golden thrones (slide whistle goes up). We’re used to English people doing that sort of thing around here, so we don’t bat an eye. Their infant, Brooklyn, wears a top hat (slide whistle breaks and needs to be replaced).
Then frustrated Man United manager Sir Alex Ferguson accidentally volleys a boot at Beckham’s beautiful face (slide whistle goes down). The Beckhams flee to Real Madrid, where a rich man is collecting great footballers like ornamental swans (the slide whistle tremolos). Becks is lonely, and there are rumours of extramarital high jinks (slide whistle goes down). The programme avoids details. Instead, Becks is paid $250 million to join a US team called LA Galaxy (slide whistle goes way up). The Beckhams go to LA, where they befriend miniature thespian cultist Tom Cruise and awards-ceremony pugilist Will Smith (slide whistle goes crazy altogether).
[ Out of nowhere, Netflix has scored a brilliant goal with BeckhamOpens in new window ]
[ David Beckham has sold his privacy to Netflix. I’m not buying itOpens in new window ]
But hiring Beckham for LA Galaxy is like hiring him for my nephew’s under-15s school team. (It might happen: it’s an Educate Together.) LA Galaxy are bad and keep trying to do touchdowns (slide whistle goes down). He makes it work for a bit (slide whistle goes up slightly), and he has a bit of a last hurrah with AC Milan (slide whistle goes up further) before he coughs consumptively and looks into the distance, because he is 38 at this point, and that’s very elderly for a footballer. He must retreat to the woods and await death (slide whistle goes right down, and a bugle sounds).
Thankfully, instead we experience some fly-on-the-wall family domesticity before Beckham launches a fancy new American team – because this series is, really, a brand-consolidating relaunch. Unsurprisingly, Beckham’s role as an expensive ambassador for the controversial Qatar World Cup isn’t mentioned. Look, it’s good that we’ve moved away from the celebrity baiting of the 1990s and 2000s, when famous people were sacrificial lambs on the altar of public cruelty. (That has been outsourced to social media.) But there is, as a consequence, a new kind of carefully managed fame documentary, in which celebrities create the illusion of loose, candid revelation while secretly giving us beautifully filmed hagiography.
On Disney+ we get wagiography. In Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, another footballer’s spouse outlines how she sleuthed out the identity of the woman who allegedly leaked stories about her to a tabloid. I’m not sure it needs more than one episode and suspect that if someone hadn’t come up with the “Wagatha Christie” nickname for her, it wouldn’t have kept the interest for so long. But what do I know? My alternative nicknames are poor by comparison (Scooby-Doo and Waggy; the Minister for Wagriculture).
I have, however, decided to become a football man now. I’m at least good enough to play for LA Galaxy.
