Plus Dolly Parton, and a vanishingly rare moment to celebrate in a court case related to sexual violence
The most affecting scene in the first episode of Victoria Beckham, the new three-part documentary that arrived this week on Netflix, revolves around a moment in which she and her daughter, Harper, 14, create family content together. If this sounds like I’m being snide, I’m not. The pair improvise and film a dance, during which Harper, with amused tolerance, weathers her mother’s try-hard moves and Beckham, weathering her daughter’s condescension, reminds us that dancing was never really her thing. It’s sweet and, as is often the case when Beckham interacts on camera with her family, feels like the closest thing you get to a genuine moment.
Not that Beckham, in the rest of the episode, appears to be performing. As Lucy Mangan pointed out in the Guardian this week, Nadia Hallgren, who made the series and is many leagues of experience below the team who made her husband’s documentary, is very bad at getting anything out of her subject. Without better prodding, you end up with a thin, flat, chaotically organised documentary, spiked with occasional, unintentional comedy. I have to confess I laughed out loud when Tom Ford popped up, arranged in front of a log fire like something from a Ken Russell film, to explain in sultry tones the meaning of Paris fashion week.
