Beckham Netflix documentary: Why we can’t look away from David and Victoria Beckham’s marriage

Beckham Is a Moving Portrait of a Marriage

A buzzy Netflix documentary sheds new light on the relationship between David and Victoria Beckham.

In the late ’90s and early aughts, David and Victoria Beckham were some of the most famous people in the world. The papers couldn’t have invented a couple more appealing to the British public than David Beckham, one of England’s greatest football players, and Victoria Beckham (née Adams), member of one of the U.K.’s most beloved pop groups, the Spice Girls. Britain was their country and we were just living in it, for a time. But because of the global appeal of football and the couple’s eventual relocation to the U.S., it’s not just Brits who know all about them—over the years, their business, both personal and professional, has been plastered over front pages everywhere that papers are printed. A new four-part documentary on Netflix, Beckham, charts David Beckham’s career and asks what that media scrutiny has been like for him and his wife as people, rather than as celebrities.

There’s a lot to love in the documentary, especially for those of us who remember the Britain of 20-odd years ago. The outrageously flamboyant matching purple outfits the Beckhams wore at their wedding, the heady days of Becksmania, when Manchester United fans all over the world would beg their parents for whatever haircut he had at the time. There’s also the soap-operatic drama in the dressing rooms between Beckham and the various managers he didn’t quite see eye to eye with. Not to mention, the “Oh, wait, that guy!” thrill of finding out that the documentary’s director, Fisher Stevens, played Hugo on Succession.

What will stay with me, though, is the portrait the documentary paints of a marriage. David and Victoria’s story began as a modern fairy tale. A beautiful pop star and a handsome footballer meet and embark on a clandestine love affair, hiding from the eyes of the media. The papers soon catch up with them, naturally, and the documentary covers the way their relationship was subject to punishing media attention as well as just plain old rubbernecking from the public. In one segment, Victoria recounts a chant that used to go up in football stadiums where Beckham played: “Posh spice takes it up the arse.” She’s good-humoured about it now. The woman sitting next to her in the stands when this happened once apparently turned to Victoria and, for lack of anything else to say, offered her a mint.

The romance of their early days is charming. Friends and family describe the pair spending all night on the phone with each other, David driving four-hour round trips from London to Manchester to see Victoria for 20 minutes. The intensity of their respective careers, the touring and the training, kept them apart, yet they found a way. But I’m more moved by the mundane realities of their long partnership. Refreshingly, Victoria says she still doesn’t like football, although she likes to see David play. They poke fun at each other, Victoria at David for being annoyed she doesn’t appreciate his neurotic cleaning, David at Victoria for claiming she was working class in her youth when her dad had a Rolls-Royce, and for being a “pain in the arse” at times. Stevens allows them to contradict each other too, as they’re almost always interviewed separately. David says Victoria was understanding about his sudden desire to move back to Europe from L.A., then immediately we cut to Victoria saying she wasn’t.

The third episode covers the infamous (to Brits, anyway) affair allegations that hit the couple in 2004, while David was playing for Real Madrid. Stevens, whose voice is present throughout the documentary, never asks either of the Beckhams whether there was any truth to the allegations that he cheated on Victoria with his former personal assistant, an omission that will let down the most gossip-hungry viewers—although, to my mind, it’s easy enough to read between the lines. More interesting, anyway, are their reflections on how they managed to stay together through a period when David’s supposed infidelity was all over the front pages and they had a young family to hold together. Or rather, how difficult they still find it to reflect on at all. Both describe the interview process for the series as having been something like therapy for them.

“It was the first time that me and Victoria had been put under that kind of pressure in our marriage,” David says. “It felt like the world was against us,” says Victoria, “and here’s this thing: We were against each other.” Neither of them really knows how they got through it. Somehow, they say, they just did.

It all feels true to the trajectory of a long relationship, rather than a carefully varnished PR line or a tale of happily ever after. Theirs is a rarefied story. The Beckhams are astronomically wealthy and world famous. But in other ways, their 24 years of marriage have weathered the same storms that any partnership of that length must. And they just muddled through, like everybody else does. Things seem—for the cameras, at least—pretty good now. In the scenes that feature the Beckhams together, they appear to still sincerely enjoy each other’s company, in a way that is quietly touching. In the final episode, they dance together goofily at a family barbecue to “Islands in the Stream.”

We’ll never know the exact ins and outs of the Beckhams’ marriage, nor should we. It’s their private business. But it’s somewhat surprising that a documentary about a footballer also manages to convey so strongly that a marriage is an evolving, complex team game. Sometimes you’re winning, and sometimes you’re losing, but the Beckhams have managed to play on.