Beckham

Beckham arrived on Netflix in October 2023 and quickly became one of the most-watched documentary series the platform had released. It was directed by Fisher Stevens, the actor turned filmmaker who shared the Oscar for The Cove, and produced by Beckham's own Studio 99 with John Battsek's Ventureland. It went on to five Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.

Across four episodes of around seventy minutes, the series follows Beckham from a football-obsessed childhood in Chingford through the Manchester United youth system, the side that would become known as the Class of '92, and into a fame no English footballer had known before. Stevens has an unusual amount of family archive to work with, and long, often candid interviews with Beckham, Victoria Beckham, Sir Alex Ferguson, Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand. The most discussed moments are small ones: Stevens pushing back on a subject used to controlling his image, and the marriage seen from both sides.

Critics were broadly warm, noting that a series made with its subject's cooperation is never quite a neutral portrait, but that this one is more open than expected about tabloid pressure and public hostility. It set the template for the prestige football documentary that followed, including the same producers' Mourinho, and it remains the most accessible entry point to the form, for football fans and for viewers who have never watched a match.