Category: streaming

not a book, streaming, tv

Not A Book: Elizabeth Taylor documentaries

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There have been a couple of documentaries recently about Elizabeth Taylor – and I’ve watched them and I have thoughts! Golden Age and Old Hollywood is one of the areas that I’m always interested in reading about (fiction and non fiction) and watching documentaries about and it was interesting that two big productions about the same person popped up so close to each other at a time when there was no obvious anniversary to explain it.

The two documentaries in question are Elizabeth Taylor: the Lost Tapes and Elizabeth Taylor – Rebel Superstar. The former is an HBO documentary, the latter a three part series executive produced by Kim Kardashian. And given that they’re both about the same person, who only had one life (duh) they both cover fairly similar ground.

Rebel Superstar has more about her later business career and it also has the better talking heads – among them Taylor’s son Chris and granddaughter Naomi, Sharon Stone, Margaret O’Brien, Kim K herself and Paris Jackson (Michael’s daughter) and Joan Collins. And oh my it needs Joan Collins – she’s the only sharp voice in a documentary that is working hard to gloss over a few things and is basically a hagiography, such is the lack of critical voices and mention of less than flattering aspects of Taylor’s personal life.

The Lost Tapes has the advantage of recordings of Liz herself, made in the mid 1960s, which means that this focuses on that era and the time leading up to it and not later. You only get a very short section at the end on everything else – addiction and later marriages are skipped over, although her work in Aids activism at a time when there was a huge amount of stigma is given more of its due. You also get cine footage filmed on set with her by Roddie McDowell where you see her with James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson. But the interviewer doesn’t give her a lot of pushback or press her on what she’s saying in the tapes, and again we’re in haigography territory.

Neither of these would have got me writing about them on their own, because it’s not really a recommendation – both lack a bite in slightly different ways. If you’re only going to watch one, I’d make it the Lost Tapes – because it has those recordings of Elizabeth talking about her life and the lovely home movie footage, but neither of them give you the full picture of Taylor’s life. If you go in not knowing anything about her, you could come out missing some of the details – like the fact that both Burton and Taylor were married to other people when they started their relationship, or the entirity of her marriage to Larry Fortensky. But if you’re interested in Hollywood history then they’re worth a watch, but if you are a newbie who wants a more complete picture, you’re probably better with a book – or even her Wikipedia!

If you’re in the UK, Rebel Superstar is on the BBC iPlayer and The Lost Tapes was shown on Sky Documentaries and is now on Now. If you’re elsewhere you’ll have to have a dig around and see which platform or streamer has bought them up.

Have a great Sunday.

not a book, streaming, theatre, tv

Not a Book: Dancing Back to the Light

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Happy Sunday everyone, I’ve got a documentary recommendation for you this week, and I’ve bumped it to the top of the list because it was only on TV on Friday night – and so it’s on iPlayer now, and it’s important for arts documentaries to get viewing figures for us to get more of them. And this is a really good one.

Steven McRae is a Principal at the Royal Ballet – and in 2019 his Achilles tendon tore in the middle of a performance, leaving him lying on the stage in agony, thinking his career could be over. Dancing Back to the Light is the story of his rehabilitation and return to the stage in 2021. It’s a long and gruelling process, and as well as following him at work in the dance studio and the gym we also see him at home with his wife, herself a retired ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet, and their three young children.

I read a lot of books about ballet dancers when I was a child (and still re-read them now as an adult to be honest) and often wished that I had learned ballet. This will give you an unflinching portrait of the effort and sacrifice that goes into being at the top of your game in the modern ballet world, and how even the best dancers can have bad habits and be powering their way through in unhealthy ways. McRae is Australian and his childhood teacher always had the ambition for him to go to the Royal Ballet school – which seemed out of reach for a kid from a Sydney suburb on the other side of the world But 17 he flew to Switzerland to participate in the Prix de Lausanne and as he tells us in the documentary he won first prize – and a scholarship to the Royal Ballet. As that Instagram caption for the trailer says; he’s also a fabulous tap dancer – this is his tap solo from that competition:

McRae is very articulate and honest about what’s going on inside his head and how he’s had to rebuild the way that he dances and his every day routine as a result of the injury. He’s a dancer who has been incredibly acclaimed for his talent and dancing style – but it’s such hard work to be as good as he is. There are various jobs that I’ve seen described as being like a swan – serene on the surface but pedaling away madly underwater and ballet seems to be very like that – for the three hours of perfection you see on stage, there is untold dedication behind the scenes as well as whatever pain or injury the dancer might be carrying with them on stage at any given time. I think even if you’re not into ballet it’s worth a watch, because like so many documentaries about sports people it shows someone fighting to get back to the peak of their powers to try and make the most of their talent and passion while they can, but also about listening to your body and taking the time you need to do things properly.

If you’re in the UK, you can watch Steven McRae: Dancing Back to the Light on iPlayer here. It’s been broadcast as part of the Arena strand of documentaries. If you’re not in the UK, this has had a cinema release in France, and I’m sure it will be popping up on streaming platforms at some point.

streaming, tv

Not A Book: Boyzone No Matter What

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Happy Sunday, this weekend I’m back with a post about another documentary series.

I am of the age that I lived through the peak of the early boyband era and so the crop of documentaries that have popped up about them recently have been a total boon for me – even if the reality that the members of the bands that I loved wasn’t the shiny happy experience that we thought they were having when we were watching them back in the day. And we have had a run of them – BBC Two had Boybands Forever just before Christmas which looked at the whole crop of bands that came through starting in the 90s and now Sky has done this three part look at Boyzone.

So if you are unfamiliar with Boyzone, they were five young men from Ireland – Ronan, Stephen, Mikey, Shane and Keith, who were formed a public auditions by Louis Walsh later went onto manage Westlife and also to be a judge on the X factor. They really came to prominence after the demise or split of Take That and had a clean cut, wholesome and youthful image – Ronan for example wasn’t even out of his teens when the band came through. What I didn’t realise at the time was that they were from very working class backgrounds and from quite a rough area of Dublin and that’s a big theme of how the experience affected them. When I went to the launch event for Reach for the Stars a couple of years ago, Nicola Robers from Girls Aloud was the special guest talking to Michael Wragg, and one of the things that she talked about was the fact that TV talent shows were a route into the music industry for working class kids and the challenges that that presented, and although Boyzone were not a TV talent show group, I think a lot of the things that she spoke about also applied to them – not really having lived away from their parents before, a lack of knowledge about how the industry worked, a dependence on the management companies who were in charge of them but who didn’t necessarily have the best interests of the band members at heart.

Unlike Take That who had the hit machine that was Gary Barlow, Boyzone had no real songwriter – they were put together by Louis Walsh, boyband svengali and future X Factor judge, who it should be noted very much gets the villain edit in this – although I don’t think it took much editing to do that – a clip that’s been doing the rounds since the show went out shows him admitting that he told the press that the boys had been in a plane crash (they hadn’t) and then didn’t tell their families, leaving them to find out in the press that their loved ones had supposedly cheated death. Anyway, Boyzone were best know for a string of hit cover version of songs by people like Tracy Chapman and the Bee Gees. If you’ve only heard of one Boyzone song, it will likely be No Matter What – an Andrew Lloyd Webber composition that came from his musical version of Whistle Down the Wind that they released as a single to coincide with the launch of the musical in the West End, or their Comic Relief single* When the Going Gets Tough

After a couple of hugely successful years, they went on hiatus “for a year”, Ronan went solo and one year turned into more – until a hugely successful first reunion tour and then the death of Stephen Gately at the age of just 33. I still remember exactly where I was when I heard that Stephen had died, and that loss of Stephen is the bit of their story that is obviously tragic, but it turns out what was going on behind the scenes was something that has clearly left all four remaining members with a lot of issues. Mikey – or Michael as he is captioned throughout – was always the member of the band that was the easiest to forget about, but in this documentary he probably has the most to say about the impact being on the band had – and still has on him and how hard he’s had to work to build himself into the person that he is now.

It’s not exactly a cheerful watch – but it is fascinating. And when combined with Boybands Forever, you get a real picture of the damage that fame can do to young people when they find themselves in the limelight and at the centre of a press scrum (particularly the sort of press scrum that was going on in the late 1990s and early 2000s) without people properly looking out for them. I wish I could say that lessons have been learned and that emerging stars are better looked after, but I’m not sure that the evidence suggests that they are.

Boyzone: No Matter What is available to stream on Now TV and they’re showing all three parts back to back on Sky Documentaries next weekend.

*Truly having the Comic Relief single was a massive deal in the 1990s – Boyzone came in a run that went Pet Shop Boys; Chrissie Hynde, Cher, Neneh CHerry and Eric Clapton; the Spice Girls; Boyzone; Westlife; Gareth Gates andbMcFly; and if you don’t remember the era of singles sales you may not quite understand and I feel so old just typing that.

streaming, tv

Not a Book: Jonathan Creek

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I did go to the theatre this week, but given that I’m going again next week and that show is on a much shorter run that this week’s one, I suspect we may be back at the theatre again next weekend, so I thought I’d mix it up and go with a retro TV series this week. I have to say I did struggle to get a video for this post because my favourite era of the series is from the pre-YouTube era…

Jonathan Creek is a mystery drama series that started in the late 1990s on the BBC. The titular character played by comedian and current QI stalwart Alan Davis and is a designer of magical illusions who is dragged into solving crimes by pushy investigative journalist Maddie Magellen, played by Caroline Quentin. Maddie is willing to lie and be devious to get what she wants, Jonathan is not. Jonathan also works for stage magician Adam Klaus who is flamboyant and often provides comedy subplots. Over the course of the nearly 20 years covered by the original series and then the subsequent specials, Maddie is replaced by ambitious TV exec Carla Borego (Julia Swalha) and then Joey, a paranormal investigator played by Sheridan Smith and finally Sarah Alexander’s Polly.

Although at the start of the series Jonathan is pretty antisocial and reclusive, over the course of the early series he gains in confidence and social skills to become fairly witty and charming in an offbeat sort of way – which continues in the specials. However, there is not a lot of running plot strands in this – they’re basically murder of the weeks, where the emphasis is on the actual mechanics of the crime being investigated. There is a will they won’t they with Maddie in the early years, but it’s never anywhere near the main focus of the series.

There are a few bits that haven’t dated that well – and if you’re under 30 the fact that at least one of the plots involves a video recorder is going to be novel to you. But the mysteries are tightly plotted and very hard to work out when you watch the show first time around. But at this point I’ve seen all of the early series a couple of times and they still hold up even when you know the solution. And they have the advantage of having a lot of interesting guest stars – the writer is David Renwick who has as long and storied history in British comedy and that brought in people. And so there are a few Easter Eggs here if you’ve watched a lot of British TV over the years – but also if you watch the pilot episode you’ll see that Adam Klaus was originally played by Anthony Stuart Head – who couldn’t continue with the series as he got a role in a little American show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Jonathan Creek is on the iplayer if you’re in the UK, and if you’re abroad it’s also available on various streaming service.

Have a great Sunday.

book adjacent, streaming

Book Adjacent: Rivals

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Back with a book adjacent streaming pick this week, because why not. And this has had so much advertising that you all can’t have missed it and as I’ve watched it I thought I should report back.

This is the pretty starry eight part adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s legendary 80s bonkbuster novel, Rivals. Set in the Cotswolds, it’s 1986 and retired Olympic showjumper and now MP Rupert Campbell Black and his rival Tony Baddingham are jockeying for power. How are they doing that? Well it’s through the medium of regional commercial TV franchises. I know. That sounds bonkers, but it works. And yes – those franchises really were a thing. And there are a lot of storylines going on here from the huge ensemble cast. At the start of the series we see Tony returning to Britain from a trip to New York where he’s recruited a hotshot producer for his company Corinium and then poaching Irish journalist and interviewer Declan O’Hara away from the BBC. And it’s the arrival of the O’Haras that sets up a lot of the events of the series.

I’m going to fess up now that I hadn’t read the book when I watched this, but maybe that’s for the best, given that you often have a picture in your head of what everyone should look like and the show often doesn’t match up. So I went into this with no preconceptions or loyalties and I enjoyed the hell out of it. This is a over the top melodrama where basically every character is doing bad things to a greater or lesser extent. In fact, the only really “good” character in all of this is the eldest O’Hara daughter Taggie. Taggie is 20, and it’s her… complex relationship with Rupert that is at the heart of this and keeps it from vereing over into awful people doing awful things. And I thought long and hard about how to describe what’s going on between Rupert and Taggie, but it basically boils down to the fact that I know that the age gap is too big, and I know that Rupert is probably morally bankrupt, but by the final episode I really didn’t care!

This has also got a lot in it about the British class system – everyone in it is rich, but they’re not all posh. And the way you can tell is through a myriad of tiny and bigger things – from Valerie’s double glazing and uncertainty about whether she should be saying dessert or pudding, to Tony’s insecurity about his grammar school education compared to Rupert’s at Harrow and much, much more. It’s so clever. Oh, and there is so much sex. From opening on a couple joining the mile high club in Concord’s toilet to fourways and pretty much everything inbetween. Excess is the word of the day – and there’s a lot of 80s excess in here. Your mileage may vary on that – and also on the sexual politics. I could have done without Rupert’s behaviour towards Taggie at the dinner party and I could definitely have done the full visuals on the nasty rape in episode six, but for the most part I just tried to see it as a product of a different time that the show runners haven’t tried to modernise too much because if you did that you would lose a lot of the rest of what makes it so much fun.

I watched the first four episodes in Essex the other week, and I then watched them again with Him Indoors so that I could watch the rest of the episodes with him and I could happily watch the whole thing again – maybe now with the benefit of fast forwarding the bits I didn’t love. And can we have series two stat please – there is so much left unfinished they can’t just keep us hanging surely…

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Mr McMahon

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Back on a streaming documentary this week, and it’s more of an interesting watch than an enjoyable one, and less of a recommendation than that word implies for reasons which I will explain if you read on…

The basics: Mr McMahon is a six part Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling promoter who ran WWE (or WWF as it was) from the early 1980s until basically the start of this year. Interviews for this documentary started before the 2022 allegations of misconduct against him emerged, and McMahon himself cancelled his final interviews for the series after this happened (as the series tells you several times). McMahon took WWE from one of a number of professional wrestling companies to the dominant force in the industry – but to say his tenure was not without controversy is to vastly understate the case.

This is the point where I say that I am not a wrestling viewer. In fact one of the things I say often when people ask me what sports I do (or don’t) watch (usually in the context of the Summer Olympics) is that I will watch pretty much anything except boxing and wrestling. During the dominant years of WWE, it very much just wasn’t on TV at a time I was watching (or channels I was watching). And lets be fair – I’m not the target market for it anyway. So I went into this not knowing a lot about wrestling other than the fact that Hulk Hogan was one of the biggest stars for a period, that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena started out in WWE and that there used to be loads of WWE toys in the Argos catalogue that I used to flick through when I was younger. Oh and that the women of WWE are called Divas, and that the winners are pre-determined.

So this was an eye-opening (and horrifying at times) watching experience for me. And of course I have no idea what has been left out, or glossed over or otherwise elided. But it does explain a lot – whether it’s how wrestling actually works, or about the wider state of the world in some ways. One thing that really, really comes through is the force of Vince McMahon’s personality. He says on camera that he doesn’t really want people to get to know him, and even in the interviews recorded after the 2022 allegations, the WWE employees are still incredibly reluctant to say anything against him – one of them describes the stuff they’ve seen so far as a hit job.

And I should say that we got to a point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the end of the documentary. The feeling started somewhere around the point where Owen Hart died (off camera but in the arena) during a Wrestlemania, and they continued the show, even with his blood on the ring, but intensified during the next episode where the Mr McMahon character and the Ruthless Aggression era just become overwhelming. But I was determined to stick it out to the end. And, oh boy. And that’s why I said at the top it’s not really a recommendation, because I came out of this pretty depressed that WWE still exists and is a thing, and that so much of it was allowed to happen at all, let alone in giant stadiums in front of baying crowds and then shown to worldwide TV audiences. But at least now I feel better informed about the world of wrestling, so I guess that’s something right?

Mr McMahon is on Netflix, you’ll probably need to be in a pretty resilient mood to watch the final few parts, and I would say go armed with a drink, but that’s not the sort of behaviour I should be encouraging, but I needed one by the end…

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Swan Song

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It’s probably stating the obvious, but it’s a long way from the UK to Kuala Lumpur, so on the way there and back I had plenty of opportunity to sample the inflight entertainment and although I did take full advantage of the fact that they had a number of my old favourite movies that I used to lull me to sleep (namely Sean Connery James Bond movies but also my beloved Pillow Talk and The Philadelphia Story), I do still have a recommendation to give you today from my viewing.

Swan Song is a feature length documentary (although if you are in Canada there was an extended four part series version) about the National Ballet of Canada’s staging of a new production of Swan Lake, under the directorship of their outgoing artistic director, retired ballerina Karen Kain. Originally due to premiere in 2020, the production was delayed by Covid, so it also shows an artform trying to regroup after the lockdowns and closures that threatened the survival of so many arts organisations. As well as Karen Kain, the documentary follows the company’s principal ballerina Jurgita Dronina and several members of the corps de ballet.

A lot of the issues that commonly come up when you’re talking about ballet are in this too – including the reckoning with racism and the fact that all the ballet “ideals” are built around white dancers, and the ever present spectre of eating disorders and body image issues. But it’s also got lots of beautiful dancing as well as a close up view of the effort it takes to mount a production like this, as well as how hard it is to be a member of the corps – which is something that often gets overlooked.

Regular readers will know that although I’m about as graceful as, well, something very ungraceful* I absolutely adored ballet books when I was a child – and in fact have all the Sadlers Wells and Drina books on my shelves to this day** and I really like documentaries that take you behind the scenes of ballet. The BBC has had a couple of really good ones – including Men at the Barre (sadly currently unavailable to watch on iPlayer) where we discovered that Vadim Muntagirov is known as Vadream by the ballerinas because he’s such a dream to work with – and so this was total catnip for me.

Although I’ve seen Swan Lake a few times and watched a whole load of documentaries about it, I wasn’t massively familiar with the National Ballet of Canada, so there was lots of interesting new stuff for me here. I wouldn’t count myself as a massive ballet fan though – so I don’t know how this would land for someone who is, but I think it would be interesting to the casual theatre or dance fan too. Him Indoors is usually my gauge of things like this for the non-fan – and I think there’s some stuff that he would have been interested in, but most of the backstage-y stuff isn’t for him, so it’s probably one that I would put on when he was out of the room and see what happened when he came back in, rather than one that I would put on to watch with him!

If you’re not going on a plane in the near future and want to watch this, it’s available to purchase now on the various streaming platforms. And just before I go it would be remiss of me to have a post about ballet this weekend and not mention the sudden death of Michaela Mabinty DePrince at just 29. Her journey from war-torn Sierra Leone to the highest level of ballet was remarkable, and she was a dedicated humanitarian as well as a beautify dancer. I’m still in a bit of shock about it to be honest.

See you tomorrow.

*I suggested Peter Crouch, but Him Indoors insists that Crouch is infact graceful. I was aiming for something that has too many legs and flails a lot. Answers on a postcard/in the comments

**in some cases more than once. Ooopsies

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: My Lady Jane

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Another week, another streaming pick and I do apologise for the fact that they’re all over the different services. I’m as cross about it as you are – which is nearly as cross as I am about the fact that I now have to sit through ads mid show on some of said services. Hey ho.

Ever thought “what I really need right now is an alternative history Tudor dramedy with a bit of magic”? No? Me neither. And yet we binged My Lady Jane across three nights and it’s a real hoot and a half. As you’ll know if you’ve watched the trailer (or maybe just by the fact that I said it’s Tudor and she’s called Jane) this is about Lady Jane Grey, who due to the machinations of those around her had an incredibly short reign after the death of Edward VI and was then executed by Queen Mary after she took the throne back. But this is an alternative history, and so there is swearing, a distinctly un-Tudor voice over and a plot that gets more and more bonkers as you go on.

It’s also got a cracking cast. I hadn’t come across any of the younger leads before but it’s got Anna Chancellor as Jane’s scheming mother, Rob Brydon having an absolute ball as Lord Dudley and Dominic Cooper as Lord Seymour. It’s utterly utterly bonkers and incredibly watchable. The ending is left open for a second series, but Amazon have already announced that there won’t be one, much to the consternation of the fans who have started a petition to try and change their mind. Watch this space, and in the meantime, have the official playlist.

streaming

Not a Book: Only Murders in the Building new series

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This is a bit of a preview, but the fourth series of Only Murders in the Building starts on Tuesday and I am very excited. Here’s the trailer – but don’t watch it if you’re not up to date with the series or you’ll get some spoilers. Instead, go and read my earlier post about the show!

Anyway, I’ve really enjoyed the first three series and I can’t wait to see how they build out the world in this latest one. As usual, we already know who the victim is, because we saw it happen at the end of series three. Selena Gomes, Steve Martin and Martin short are back as Mabel, Charles and Oliver, and it looks like Meryl Streep is too, given that she was at the premiere the other night (holding hands with Short – which has got all that speculation going again) and although it seems like Jesse Williams is not (another Mabel love interest bites the dust) there are a whole load of A-listers who are due to appear including Molly Shannon, Eva Longoria and Eugene Levy. I would say I can’t wait, but I will wait until the whole series is available because I do like to be able to go straight on to the next episode and not have to wait another week. Also I’ll wait because it’s on Disney + here in the UK and I don’t currently have a subscription to that so I’ll need to finish out some other things on the other services before I swap it in!

Have a great Sunday everyone.

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: America’s Sweethearts

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Back to the streaming services this Sunday and a documentary that I actually watched basically as soon as it came out – but which has taken a few weeks to actually get posted because of things that were slightly more pressing on a time front. But actually it’s been really interesting to watch the conversations about this series over the last few weeks as well.

America’s Sweethearts is a seven part documentary series about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. It follows them across the course of one season – with auditions to join the team, the training camp that follows and then the actual football season. It picks out a couple of the women in particular to highlight – Victoria and to a lesser degree Madeleine, veterans whose mothers were also on the squad; Caroline, newly retired and trying to adjust to the post-DCC world and her sister Anna-Kate who is auditioning for the team herself this year; Kelcey, a senior veteran on the team in her final season and Reese, a rookie candidate looking to make the team for the first time. Using those women it explores the impact of being on the team – physically and mentally, the sisterhood of the women who have been a part of it, and the squad’s place in the multi-billion dollar brand that is the Dallas Cowboys.

This is not the first series about the team – there were previously 14 seasons of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team produced by the CMT channel. Both series were authorised by the organisation itself, the people running the team are the same – DCC director Kelli Finglass, chief choreographer Judy Trammell – both former DCC themselves – and their boss Charlotte Jones Anderson, daughter of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Even some of the cheerleaders on the squad are the same – the CMT show finished with the 2021 season and some of those women were still cheering last seaons – but the actual shows are very different.

Making the Team was very much a reality tv series in many ways – each season followed a similar structure: you started with the preliminary auditions and semi finals, it moved on to finals weekend where the re-auditioning veterans join the new hopefuls, then you move to training camp where across the next episodes the girls will learn the “signature dance” complete with kickline ending in the infamous jump splits, get make overs, be fitted for their uniforms, have their publicity photos taken and watch the rookie hopefuls get cut one by one to make a team of around 36. Some years you’ll also get to see auditions for the team’s show group – who get to do extra dance performances beyond the football games – or watch the veterans trip to a holiday resort to shoot the squad’s swimsuit calendar. The main focus of the show is on the fresh rookies – some will be completely new, others might be returners who were cut in previous years – and get a few glimpses of the cheerleaders you’ve followed in recent seasons.

And as you’ve probably guessed by comparing my descriptions of the two shows, they are quite different beasts. And not just because Netflix has paid for the music rights so you can finally be told that the “Signature dance” is actually known as Thunderstruck – because that’s the song that it is danced to*. The team behind America’s Sweethearts are using the structure of the season as a way of examining the idea of the squad as a whole.

And the appeal of the series goes way beyond the viewers of the old CMT series (something which the series’s subreddit is yet to come to terms with). What do I mean by that? well Him Indoors hated MTT with a burning passion – my sister and I watched it when he was out of the room – but he said he wanted to take a look at this series and see what it was like – and ended up watching the whole thing. A colleague at work who is a sports and documentary fan but not someone I would have expected to have watched it, had already watched it when I went to recommend it to him and described it as the best documentary series he’s watched this year.

And there are a lot of different things it is possible to take from watching it – hence why it’s spawed a thousand think pieces for you to read on the subject. There’s Vanity Fair’s The Agony and Ecstasy of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Show, Vox’s The ugly process of turning beautiful women into Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, The Guardian’s Do you struggle to accept rejection? We could all learn a lot from American Cheerleaders, USA Today’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Netflix show is addictive. Here’s why, The Globe and Mail’s The secret feminism of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and BBC News’s more simple America’s Sweethearts: Life after Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. And that’s just a small selection.

I could write paragraphs more about the show – but this post is already massively long, so I’m going to wrap it up here and hope that this is enough to get you to take a look at the series, no matter what your views on cheerleaders or American sport!

Have a great Sunday everyone.

*and for long-time viewers of MTT who (like me) have never made it to a Cowboys game, this does have a pretty much complete performance of Thunderstruck for you to enjoy and see how it all the various parts fit together. And yes, Kelli does also explain her Yes, No, Maybe scoring system for auditions. You’re welcome.