David Beckham’s Netflix docuseries might be the best one I watch all year

Netflix has unveiled the official trailer for Beckham, its documentary centered on the England soccer icon – and it looks like it was tailormade for a viewer like me.

The four-part docuseries will tell the inside story of the global football superstar, charting his rise from humble beginnings in East London to his position as one of the world’s most recognizable faces. Beckham won’t just focus on the former Manchester United and Real Madrid star’s soccer career, though – the Netflix series will also train a lens on his private life, including his marriage with Victoria Beckham, emergence as a cultural phenomenon, and how various events on the field affected his relationships off it.

Check out the trailer for Beckham, which exclusively launches on one of the best streaming services on October 4, below:

Now, soccer – sorry, UK fans, I know it’s called football, but we’re speaking to a global audience here – isn’t for everyone. Despite its position as one of the most popular sports on the planet, there are millions of people who aren’t interested in it. Those individuals are unlikely to find much to enjoy from loading up Beckham, then.

For someone like me, though, Beckham might be the documentary that finally convinces me to start watching more of Netflix’s fact-based shows.

I’ll preface this by saying I like watching the odd documentary. I’ve seen a number of them on terrestrial UK channels, such as BBC One and Channel 4, as well as select offerings on Disney Plus, including – ironically – the Beckham-fronted Save Our Squad docuseries. That said, my go-to visual content – especially from a streaming platform perspective – are films and TV series, aka fictional works that I can sit back and enjoy. I’ve seen plenty of the best Netflix movies and best Netflix shows, for example, but haven’t really dabbled in the Netflix documentary space.

Beckham might change all of that. I’m a huge soccer fan, albeit one that was what you’d consider a late bloomer. In fact, I didn’t really get into the so-called ‘beautiful game’ until I was eight years old, with the England-hosted Euro 96 international competition being the first time I took an interest in the sport.

Why is that information dump important? Because my initial interest in soccer began as David Beckham was breaking onto the scene in the English Premier League. 

Okay, he started out at Manchester United, a football team I still can’t stand to this day (sorry, United fans) due to their dominance of the English Premier League during the Sir Alex Ferguson years. But there’s no denying that Beckham was, for his time, one of the best footballers around, especially from an English player perspective. I grew up watching Beckham flaunt his obvious talents on the biggest stages around the world – albeit via the medium of television – and become the hugely popular soccer star, cultural icon, family man, and businessman he now is. 

Few soccer players have reinvented themselves as well, or remained as relevant, as the player affectionately dubbed ‘Becks’. As someone who continues to command the attention of the press, soccer fans, and gossip columns the world over, too, I’d be very surprised if Beckham’s docuseries doesn’t storm the Netflix charts when it’s released in early October.

For me, though, the appeal of Beckham doesn’t solely lie in its potential to be one of the best Netflix documentaries ever made. It presents an opportunity for me (and maybe you, dear reader, if you’re so inclined) to take a trip down memory lane. We can nostalgically look back on – and hear about from Beckham’s perspective – that free kick he scored for England against Greece to secure qualification to the 2002 World Cup in Brazil. We can learn about what makes him tick, and gain exclusive insights into some of the most shocking moments from his career – for instance his red card against Argentina, which made him a national scapegoat, and the infamous ‘Bootgate’ incident with Sir Alex. And of course we can get nostalgic for a time before soccer became a plaything for billionaire owners and cash-rich TV companies.

There are bound to be other top-tier factual shows launching between now and the end of 2023, which could make their way onto, say, our best Max documentaries and best Hulu documentaries lists. After all, we’ve already seen plenty of great sports-based docuseries recently – Welcome to Wrexham, They Call Me Magic, and Break Point to name three. Meanwhile, away from sports the likes as Harry and Meghan have dominated the documentary news cycle this year.

Even though I haven’t seen Beckham yet, though, I imagine it’ll take an extraordinary docuseries or docufilm to replace it as the best documentary I’ll see this year. I’m that confident of how good it’ll be – and hey, if it’s as good as it looks, it may persuade me to check out some of Netflix’s other supposedly brilliant documentaries.

You might also like

Winning Time season 2 was a slam dunk with audiences – so, of course, Max canceled itDisney Plus’ most-watched movie record has been shattered again as Elemental‘s resurgence continuesLoki season 2 has a new Disney Plus release date – and it’s good news for Marvel fans