Following the story behind the creation of football in the world, as a group of ambitious propel, create the idea, work hard to complete it and pass through the class divide, till they manage to make it one of the most well known sports in the world.
The costume and production design is immersive, it's all quite gorgeously shot, and the whole stands alongside The Crown in showing that Netflix can get this stuff done every bit as well as the BBC.
This is a series about football, which means they have to play football for long stretches of every episode. And yet somehow the show manages to make every game stereotypical and yet simultaneously tedious.
There's plenty of fudging of the facts... But that's not the biggest failing of The English Game. Nor is the fact some of the relationship drama feels rather wooden and perfunctory. The biggest issue is that there's not enough of, well, the English game.
The baggage ends up being a bit bittersweet, but it is still worth checking out, especially those interested in the origins of soccer. [Full Review in Spanish]
Mostly, this is Elizabeth Gaskell's North And South (complete with mill strikes) as teamed with a variety of highly predictable romance subplots and any number of underwhelming football scenes.
Apart from the novelty of having football at the centre of the action, The English Game has largely been compiled from a bunch of wheezy old cliches about class inequality.
You begin [the show] thinking that you're going to see something interesting about the origins of football in England and end up swallowing a cheesy and gimmicky melodrama without an iota of depth. [Full review in Spanish]
