Welcome to Wrexham: Review

The question with Welcome to Wrexham is a simple one.

Were it not for Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchasing a lower league football club, would a series have been commissioned?

It's easy to be cynical here - sure, the elevator pitch wouldn't have worked as well, but you'd hope the story, which at its heart is a classic sports underdog tale, would have still been commissioned for audiences abroad and in the UK.

And yet the doco series, which barely clips a 30 minute run time, may feel like a true life Ted Lasso in many ways, but it manages to just stay away from its schmaltzy edges.

It follows the Hollywood pair as they acquire the lower league football side, taking on not only the team, but also the hopes and dreams of a depressed Welsh town that really has little going for it.

It has all the hallmarks of a traditional Hollywood story, but by setting up the show as a pacey doco that follows all levels of the club's aspirations, it manages to work surprisingly well. Slickly edited, with football games condensed to slow mo footage and also short, the speed of the show counts greatly in its favour.

From the cynicism of the supporters to the utter disbelief of the players after an executive is unveiled whose qualifications are that he writes for a US comedy show, the series is honest in its intent - even if sometimes the execution doesn't permit total transparency.

In a sweep out of the club to improve fortunes, none of the players and management team who are chucked out are given any airtime after their dismissal, and none of those awkward conversations are aired.

It's perhaps unsurprising, but for a show that seems to be a warts and all approach to the task ahead, the desire to hide behind the darker moments of the reality of Wrexham is a minor disappointment.

Elsewhere, you get the Reynolds-patented quips and charm you'd expect - but the series works better when it concentrates on the day-to-day people - from the council painter who's sick of painting the same colour every day of his 12 years of employment to the pub owner whose community has been ripped apart by Covid-19 and misfortunes of the team, the series soars when it settles for the grounded humanity at the heart of a team supporter.

Welcome to Wrexham may be obvious in many ways in terms of heartwarming fare, and following lives after lockdowns and robbed of hope, but it's a constantly uplifting series which will appeal to not just sports fans too - one that is about a community's heart and spirit - and not just the Hollywood bigwigs that come into their lives.

Welcome to Wrexham is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes releasing every Thursday.