David Beckham’s Save Our Squad: Our verdict on new reality TV show

Save Our Squad with David Beckham.

Greg and Zanna watch a show that’s not about David Beckham.

SCORES Impact of Beckham's dreamy eyes: 5 Impact of Beckham's advice: 1.5

SHE SAW

I may have spent three hours every Saturday morning this past winter on the sidelines of the soccer field but my understanding of the game is embarrassing, my interest almost non-existent. I do, however, have a pretty solid understanding of the Spice Girls - career highs and lows and public love lives - and thus, by proxy, an equally solid understanding of soccer super-hunk David Beckham. He's always struck me as shy and uncomfortable on camera, so starring in his own reality series - Save Our Squad - sounded like an odd choice.

The premise of the show is simple: Beckham joins the coaching team of an under-14s East London football side that's currently sitting at the bottom of their league's table and tries to make them better. Greg recently wrote an article about how, statistically speaking, coaches make very little difference to a team's performance, so we were starting from a place of deep scepticism about the premise and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

What makes the show interesting and genuinely heartwarming is the personalities of these young boys. They're all from different backgrounds, many of them from low socio-economic households, but they're bonded by a passion for football that is pure and sweet. Beckham's clearly comfortable with these kids and you can see his experience as a father of four coming through in genuine connections with the boys, even when you can see them quietly freaking out that THE David Beckham is giving them advice.

This isn't to say the show is without flaws. It's reality TV after all, the concept of which is already a lie. In truth, it's constructed reality and at times you can see the inner workings of the production a little too clearly. There are a few set-up phone calls and conversations that feel unnatural and the series uses every opportunity it can to recap some of Beckham's career highlights, which can feel a bit clunky and self-congratulatory. During each of these, Greg regaled me with tales of his whereabouts when he had watched the featured game. I lost him for minutes at a time as he was drawn back into the excitement of his football-mania era.

Against all odds, though, it appears that Beckham might be making a difference with this team. His coaching is rarely, if ever, skills or strategy based and is almost entirely about supporting the kids to believe in themselves. It's impossible to watch these awe-struck boys - in that challenging space between child and adulthood - find some confidence and win some games and not feel completely caught up in their joy - albeit, at times, also their devastation.

HE SAW

The reality TV format has always relied heavily on the procurement, manipulation and exploitation of great talent, and in this case it has succeeded big time, but not with David Beckham, who is, at best, the show's fourth most interesting character. After ostensibly coming in to fix an under-14 team, which is in danger of relegation after its opening few matches, he watches one game, then disappears for the next three. I'm not sure how long the season is, but I'm presuming that's at least a decent portion of it. Not even Scott Robertson could fix an underperforming team in such a short space of time. Furthermore, Beckham has no background in coaching, and his motivational catchphrases and endless talk of self-belief don't dovetail at all with research into how players and teams improve anyway.

Much of Beckham's interaction with the kids is along the lines of, "This thing that's happening to you reminds me of something that once happened to me," then we cut to footage of Beckham playing for England at the World Cup, or scoring some big goal for Manchester United. While entertaining, these stories are not especially relatable.

Beckham also plays an important role as target for the vicious banter of the team's cocky goalkeeper Frederick. After one practice, at which he saves a Beckham free kick, Frederick says, "David, are you going to try next time?" Ultimately, though, Beckham's central and most important role in the series is aesthetic - wearing clean, well-fitting clothes effectively and looking smokily down the barrel for pieces to camera, in which the content is overwhelmed by the packaging.

The show is a classic bait-and-switch. Beckham is the bait but what keeps us watching is the kids. It's classically exploitative reality television, using the kids' insecurities and difficulties to engage us emotionally, but engage it does. There's something so poignant about the stage of life the children are at, with all its hope and posturing. The show's great strength is that it captures and amplifies that. When it bore down on the story of the last kid picked for a training game, I remembered what it was like to be that kid and asked myself how the producers could be so cruel as to put him through that in front of millions of viewers. I never asked myself why I wasn't turning off.

Save Our Squad with David Beckham is now streaming on Disney+