Recommended: Welcome to Wrexham on FX
What's Welcome to Wrexham About?
When two Hollywood A-listers buy a downtrodden British football club and promise great days ahead, it's the setup for an irresistible docuseries about small-town sport.
Who's involved?
Why (and to whom) do we recommend it?
Wrexham AFC are one of the oldest soccer teams on the planet. Located an hour down the A5 from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in northwest Wales, they play on an ancient pitch called Racecourse Ground. Older fans may still recall the glory days when Wrexham knocked off the likes of Arsenal and other elite English teams, but those are well in the past. Ten years ago, with the club teetering on collapse, its fan base ponied up the funds to keep it afloat. But just barely: Over time Wrexham were relegated to the lowest rung of Britain's tiered football divisions, known sadly as Non-League.
Really, if you're going to make an inspirational real-life series about sport, you can't do better than that, can you? Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney thought so. Despite knowing bupkis about English football — in addition to which, they had never worked together before — the two stars decided over Zoom to purchase Wrexham AFC, infuse it with cash, and try to turn its fortunes around. The fact that this happened three months after Ted Lasso premiered? Pure coincidence, for sure.
Anyway, cameras began rolling right away, and within a few months FX had made a two-season commitment to Welcome to Wrexham. The resulting first season of this docuseries does not disappoint. Even if you know nothing about soccer or British club sport, if you like a good underdog story, this one will play its way right into your heart. From the sentimental Top 40 classics that play over the closing credits to the graphics that explain British soccer lingo for a U.S. audience, Welcome to Wrexham makes two millionaires purchasing an obscure team in a faraway sports league seem somehow as all-American as Hoosiers.
Perhaps a more apt comparison, though, is to Netflix's Last Chance U, given the small community (Wrexham has 3,000 residents) and the high stakes for everyone who's not walking around with development-deal money. We get to meet many of the club's most ardent supporters, longtime employees, and hard-luck players in addition to the outsiders that Reynolds and McElhenney have paid to send in. While the arrival of two gilded saviors may answer the prayers of the Wrexham faithful, other people's dreams will have to die. Coaches must be sacked and players released — and even then there's no guarantee the club will earn promotion to League play. There will doubtless be many setbacks and humiliations before the new owners' investments start to pay off, if they ever do.
That's the drama of sport, and Welcome to Wrexham presents its story in a charming, straightforward manner. Wrexham AFC's owner-producers know that they don't have to try too hard to make a compelling, fun-to-watch TV series out of this material.
Pairs well with
TOPICS: Welcome to Wrexham, FX, Fleur Robinson, Humphrey Ker, Phil Parkinson, Rob McElhenney, Rob McElhenney, Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Reynolds, Shaun Harvey