Karl Puschmann: Ryan Reynolds shoots for soccer success in new doco-series Welcome to Wrexham

Rob McElhenney, left, and Ryan Reynolds in doco-series Welcome to Wrexham, streaming on Disney+.

At the very lowest end of the English football league, the beautiful game is not so pretty. Proud football clubs that date back more than a century are forced to scrap out a meagre living, surviving in a state of constant dread that one day they'll hear the final whistle for good.

Up in the razzle-dazzle of the Premier League cash may splash about like a toddler in the bath, but down in the fifth tier of the National League money's too tight to mention. Most income is raised through ticket sales to the die-hard supporters who live in the town and have all their hopes, dreams and fulfilment in life invested in the success of "their team". To club and fans alike, football is not a matter of life or death, it's much more important than that (to paraphrase legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly).

The problem is once you bottom out into the fifth tier, it's pretty much game over. With drastically reduced funds you can't pay for talent and, even if you somehow scramble some money together, good luck attracting a top player to come slum it with you down in the gutter.

With only two teams out of 24 winning promotion at the end of the season, climbing up and out of the National League is a monumentally difficult challenge for any club. It might as well be a pipe dream for the followers of Wrexham FC, the world's third oldest professional football club (founded in 1864) that sits smack bang in the middle of the working-class town in northern Wales and has a fiercely loyal yet perpetually disappointed fanbase.

However, early in 2021 they were given something to cheer about and given a little razzle-dazzle of their own when two Hollywood superstars appeared out of the blue with an offer to buy the club and a promise to pull them up from the bottom of the National League and set them firmly on the path to eventual Premier League glory.

That Rob McElhenney, the co-creator, co-writer and co-star of the brilliantly savage sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and movie star Ryan Reynolds didn't know the foggiest about football wasn't a concern when their offer was evaluated.

As McElhenney admits in the first episode of their new docu-series Welcome to Wrexham, the pair had TV money, movie money and the glamour of Hollywood behind their bid. A cocktail any struggling club would be foolish not to gulp down.

But McElhenney's passion for sports runs as deep as his bank account. It was his idea to buy Wrexham FC and, presumably, to make the documentary series. He's a true believer in sport's myth of the underdog and after learning of Wrexham - both the club and the town - finds himself instantly identifying with its working-class roots.

"Even though I've never been there," he says. "It reminds me of Philadelphia."

While McElhenney is all in, emotionally and financially, his mate Reynolds appears to be just along for the ride, treating it like a high-stakes, real-world version of Fantasy Football as opposed to a calling like his new business partner.

The series, which is streaming on Star on Disney+, is a breezy watch as it follows the fortunes and floundering of the inexperienced club owners along with a handful of players and fans from the town.

To its credit, it doesn't shy away from the ugly side of management. We're introduced to the team's striker, a father of two with a baby on the way, only to see him foolishly get a red card in a critically important match which leads to him being let go from the team the following week.

The star owners may have taken over the club but they don't take over the series, appearing mostly through Zoom conversations as they struggle over managerial decisions like making a big money offer to a star player, firing the team manager or replacing the damaged field at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

With their comedic backgrounds, it's not surprising the pair are naturally funny together. McElhenney's cutting jokes, familiar to anyone who's watched It's Always Sunny, seeing him whipping out lines like, "this is the draw of conversations", while Reynolds' winking meta-humour is seemingly unable to be switched off, even when commiserating over an astoundingly bad run of losses that see their hopes of promotion sinking before they've had a chance to start swimming.

Shot with all the finesse of a big Hollywood production, the series is clearly shooting for a triumphant end-of-season finale. But real life doesn't play like a movie and the excitement that met the stars' arrival begins to dissipate as their staff and team changes don't begin to deliver the fans' expected uptick in fortune.

Not just for sports fans, Welcome to Wrexham is an entertaining allrounder and a real crowd pleaser. The behind-the-scenes stuff, while lacking in gritty detail, is fascinating and frequently funny, but it's the stories of the team's players and fans that give the show its heart.

But at the halfway point of the series whether that's enough to carry it through the full season, remains to be seen.