When residents of Wrexham, a small Welsh mining town near the English border, heard that two Hollywood actors wanted to buy their local football club, they had one question: "Why Wrexham?" It's a good question, and one Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds don't provide a satisfying answer for in the first two episodes of their new documentary series.
When asked by a supporter in a Zoom meeting, McElhenney offers an emotive, nonsense answer about how much Wrexham, a town he's never actually been to at this point, reminds him of his hometown of Philadelphia. The more likely story, which you suspect both men are just too embarrassed to admit, is that they were jealous of Jason Sudeikis' role in Ted Lasso and so decided to go one better and make Ted Lasso, the documentary.
Despite their initial misgivings, the club's supporters soon warm to their new Hollywood overlords. And McElhenny and Reynolds, who remarkably had never met in person before buying a football club together, do seem like their hearts are in the right place, however naive they may be about their new investment. Wrexham AFC plays in the national league, the fifth tier of the English football pyramid. "Getting out of the national league," one club member reckons, "is the hardest job in world football."
Just how tough that job is going to be is made clear in the second episode, as the team travels to London for a must-win game at Dagenham & Redbridge. Here we're finally introduced to some of the players and staff, and with the new owners taking a back seat – huddled around the low-res single-camera live stream in their respective living rooms – the series really begins to click. Probably the best thing the new owners can do for both their club and this documentary is stay out of it as much as possible.
The Bear (Disney+)
The Bear will stream on Disney+ from 31st August. Photo / Supplied
The tsunami of hype built up for The Bear when it aired in the US a month or two ago is now little more than a king tide lapping at the shores of Aotearoa, but that doesn't change the fact this is still one of the best new shows of the year. Following the death of his brother, a fine dining chef returns to Chicago to take over his family's old-fashioned sandwich shop, inheriting a business on the brink of collapse in almost every way and encountering resistance at almost every turn from his new staff. It's fresh, gritty, urgent viewing – a lot of the time it feels like you're right there in the cramped kitchen with them.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video)
The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power will be released on Prime Video on September 2.
'Tis the year of the epic fantasy prequel: first Game of Thrones, now The Lord of the Rings. But don't throw out your limited edition DVD box set of the Peter Jackson movies just yet – this new Amazon series takes place thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit, bringing to life the ancient Middle-earth lore Tolkien alluded to in his books. Stuff like the forging of the titular Rings of Power and the rise of Sauron, Elrond being Elrond … a treat for both hardcore Tolkien-heads and patriots who love to see New Zealand scenery on screen.
The Twelve (TVNZ+, from Tuesday)
Twelve everyday people are selected for jury duty in a murder trial which is both traumatising and controversial, as a woman is accused of killing a child.
Sam Neill plays a defence lawyer to a provocative performance artist in this Australian courtroom drama miniseries. But as if the case of his client accidentally killing her niece in the name of art and then dumping her body in Sydney Harbour isn't all the intrigue you need, The Twelve is actually more concerned with the twelve jurors making the decision, delving into their own troubled lives and dark secrets. The result is a sprawling drama with many moving parts pulling us in several directions at once, but will it click into place or will it all fall apart? The jury's still out on that one.
Imagine time travelling back to the first ever Armageddon Expo in 1995 and telling one of the fantasy nerds there that in the future there'd be a Dune movie, a Lord of the Rings TV series, a Star Wars TV series and also a new series called Game of Thrones where the characters have sex. And that they'd all come out within 12 months of each other and have a combined production budget of approximately $1 trillion, yet instead of being the happiest subculture in the world they'd all be complaining bitterly about them all on a thing called "the internet". Dreadful.
From the Vault: Forrest Gump (1994) (Prime Video)
Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) had a front-row seat to some of the biggest events in 20th-century American history, but when the movie ends, in the early 1980s, he's still only in his 40s. What did he do next? If Tom Cruise can make a new Top Gun this year then surely Hanks can give us Forrest Gump 2. Does he get really into computers? Does he unwittingly utter the phrase "make America great again" within earshot of one Donald Trump? Where was he on September 11? And what about his son (Haley Joel Osment)? Invented cryptocurrency, probably.
Podcast of the Week: Shameless Acquisition Target
If you've been listening to podcasts for a while, you might have heard one of the shows Laura Mayer has worked on. The longtime podcast producer is part of the surprisingly long list of names at the end of episodes of The Dream, Bad Blood, Revisionist History and countless others. She's spent her career helping build podcast companies and then watching some of her former colleagues get insanely rich when those companies are acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars by even bigger companies.
Mayer's new podcast Shameless Acquisition Target is her tongue-in-cheek but also deadly serious attempt to finally be "acquired" herself. It's a podcast about the business of making a podcast – only about 100 times more entertaining than that sounds. Mayer has gallons of tea to spill about how podcasts are made from her years in the industry and explains things like why all podcasts these days are either true-crime or celebrities interviewing each other and/or recapping old TV shows. She also seeks expert advice on how to make money out of her podcast and turn it – and by extension herself – into an "acquisition-worthy" product. It's bleak, but also very funny and smart – there's nothing else out there quite like it.
