{"id":187979,"date":"2025-10-09T11:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T11:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/187979\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T11:58:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T11:58:09","slug":"victoria-beckhams-netflix-documentary-is-bland-and-joyless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/187979\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Beckham’s Netflix documentary is bland and joyless"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tPosh Spice’s three-part film glosses over the gossip to focus solely on her Paris Fashion Week show\n <\/p>\n

When David Beckham released his Netflix documentary, Beckham<\/a>, two years ago, he was overshadowed by his wife. Victoria \u2013 former Spice Girl turned fashion designer \u2013 presented as not just a wingwoman to David, standing by him through media storms and extra-marital affairs, but entertaining in her own right. It was she who created the series\u2019 viral moment too, playing up her working-class roots as David reminds her that she used to be driven to school in a Rolls-Royce.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s little wonder the same production team has made another documentary series about her. Yet Victoria Beckham isn\u2019t the warts-and-all, revelation-filled<\/a> film that I hoped for. Instead, it\u2019s a fashion documentary, mostly about Beckham\u2019s stressful build-up to her Paris show last September. This isn\u2019t a series about Beckham the person \u2013 it\u2019s about Beckham the business.<\/p>\n

Mercifully, the three episodes are rather light on the history lessons. Beckham\u2019s time as a pop star has been well documented, and her marriage to the former England football player was raked over extensively in his own series. We do get insight into her childhood, in which those \u201cworking-class roots\u201d are hinted at \u2013 \u201cmy dad started with nothing,\u201d she says, remembering how he (an electrical wholesaler) would have his children wiring up products at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n

\"TVThe series mostly documents Beckham\u2019s upcoming Paris Fashion Week show (Photo: Netflix)<\/p>\n

Grainy disposable camera photos show Beckham \u2013 then Victoria Adams \u2013 as a young girl, dressed up and on stage at the theatre school her parents remortgaged the house to send her to. She knows how much they wanted her to succeed, she says, and she knew she had to live up to the gift they had given her. But she was not happy \u2013 her teachers criticised her weight and always put her to the back of the stage. It was there that she developed the eating disorder that would rear its head again when the press attacked her. <\/p>\n

That Beckham had an eating disorder won\u2019t surprise anyone who saw her fragile frame plastered across the tabloids in the late noughties, and the topic is glossed over without much attention in the documentary. As is her relationship with the other Spice Girls. \u201cDon\u2019t forget where you came from,\u201d she recalls Melanie B saying to her a few years ago, to which she replied: \u201cI\u2019ve never forgotten where I came from\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"VictoriaIf there\u2019s one thing she wants us to take away, it\u2019s that she wants to be taken seriously<\/p>\n

Despite repeatedly telling the cameras how much she loved performing as a child, the first Spice Girls reunion in 2007 cemented the fact that she didn\u2019t want to be on the stage \u2013 instead, her calling is fashion. <\/p>\n

But the average viewer won\u2019t care about the Paris fashion show we\u2019re given behind-the-scenes access to, and it makes for rather dull viewing. Donatella Versace, Tom Ford, Anna Wintour and Juergen Teller are all impressive names to have as interviewees, but they can\u2019t tell us anything about Beckham beyond her public-facing fashion persona. <\/p>\n

\"StantonThere\u2019s little insight into what family life is like for the Beckhams today (Photo: Netflix)<\/p>\n

We are told time and time again that putting on a fashion show is chaotic and stressful, but Beckham wears her usual steely expression throughout. She blames her lack of smiles on her nervousness in front of a camera. \u201cI just can\u2019t do it,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why Victoria Beckham is so dry. There are glimmers of that famous but elusive sense of humour, poking fun at her own reputation: refusing a Wispa from David, she says: \u201cI haven\u2019t touched chocolate since the 90s \u2013 I\u2019m not going to start now.\u201d There are tears when she talks about the stress of almost losing her business to debt and having to repeatedly ask David to bail her out. But otherwise, Beckham has her game face on. <\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing she wants us to take away, it\u2019s that she wants to be taken seriously. But if she was once underestimated as a frivolous ex-pop star, Victoria Beckham shows that she\u2019s now gone too far the other way. It\u2019s a bland, joyless watch. <\/p>\n

\u2018Victoria Beckham\u2019 is streaming on Netflix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Posh Spice’s three-part film glosses over the gossip to focus solely on her Paris Fashion Week show When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6871,96,2839,392,27062,56,54,55,5932],"class_list":["post-187979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-david-beckham","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-tv-reviews","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-victoria-beckham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}