Review: Robbie Williams Netflix documentary - is it worth watching?

A new four-part documentary series on Robbie Williams premieres on Netflix. But is it worth watching?

Reviewers Greg Bruce and Zanna Gillespie watch Robbie Williams, the new four-part documentary series on Netflix.

SHE SAW

In his newly released Netflix documentary, Robbie Williams claims he’s only ever in two places: on stage or in bed, which - if we’re to believe him - means right now he’s probably in a bed somewhere in this very country ahead of his Mission Estate concerts this weekend.

His bed is an odd setting for a documentary - it’s depressing. He spends most of the series in his underwear, lounging among the sheets, curtains drawn, laptop open. It doesn’t shout thriving or even content, more hanging on by a thread. This is the framework of the documentary: Williams sits down, no lies down, to watch 30 years of behind the scenes footage spanning the breadth of his turbulent singing career. It would be a daunting task for anyone to look back over their life in this way but more so for Williams who’s battled addiction and depression throughout. The staging of the series, which is directed by Joe Pearlman who also did the excellent documentary about Lewis Capaldi’s mental health struggles, feels almost like an intervention. Possibly an ill-advised one given how traumatic some of the footage is for Robbie.

It’s hard not to compare this to the recently released Beckham documentary: four episodes of a 90s icon looking back over career highlights and lowlights on film and commenting on them with the benefit of hindsight. It seems Netflix has found itself a winning formula and I expect we’ve got several more of these to come. There’s a common villain in both these series: the British press, who eviscerated Robbie (and Beckham) on a regular basis. I imagine the UK tourism board have had some meetings about how to save the country’s reputation in the wake of so much bad PR.

Williams is a challenging character. He comes off as petty and arrogant in his early Take That years, although, to be fair, he was a teenager and pettiness and arrogance is integral to survival through those years. Still, he was and clearly still is a difficult person to be around a lot of the time. It’s alarming to see how young he was when he became famous: 16. By 21 he was in rehab for the first time. His entire adult identity had been shaped by constant attention, adoration and the high of performing for tens of thousands of screaming fans. If that’s the way you’ve learnt to regulate your mood, anything more ordinary is going to be a struggle.

It’s an extremely compelling series following a career that seemed likely to implode at any moment and sometimes did. Much like Beckham, it concludes with Williams as the family man - married father of four - but it stops short of him finding happiness. While Beckham’s out tending to his bees and realigning his T-shirts, Williams is in bed with his laptop. He says he’s on his way to happiness but it’s painfully obvious he may never get there.

Robbie Williams' new documentary celebrates 25 years of his solo career.

HE SAW

The story of Robbie Williams is, in some ways, a simple morality tale: King Midas but with better dance moves. His life was, for a period, the ultimate instantiation of our cultural craving for success, adulation and cash. But, once he had it all, he was crushed beneath its weight. What will bring you happiness, if not everything you ever wanted?

What you feel most strongly throughout this astonishing four hour examination of this extraordinary life is the poignancy of a man straining for an understanding of how to exist in the world.

Yes, in some ways his looks like the usual rock star life – multiple addictions (booze, cocaine, adderall, oxycontin, vicodin, morphine), interventions, rehab and the standard pitfalls of fame’s impact on interpersonal relationships: Is anyone actually interested in what he’s got to say or are they just listening so intently because he’s famous?

To some extent the documentary follows the traditional rock star arc, but the arc’s leaps and lurches are enormous and often shocking, and the conclusion is deeply ambiguous. Towards the end of the documentary, reflecting on the process of making it, Williams says he has found watching the highs and often simultaneous lows of his life to be cathartic, but also difficult. He describes it with the sort of insightful, witty phrase he employed so often in interviews at his height, and which helped elevate him from musical god to cultural phenomenon: “The dark night of the soul turned into a long weekend.”

Love saves him, maybe. He meets his now-wife Ayda and they have four children. He talks of it in the documentary as being a happy ending and says he is now living through a long golden period but he also says “who knows what’s to come?”

The breakout star of the documentary is his 10-year-old daughter, who is only in it for a few minutes, but who – in her unadulterated hope, love, joy and innocence – is a sort of anti-Robbie.

At one stage, she wanders into the room while he’s watching footage of a massive, gig-long, on-stage panic attack that nearly ended his career at its very height. She asks him if she can have a treat.

“Listen,” he says, “I’ve reached a point that’s probably the most traumatic of the documentary.”

“What happened?” she says.

“A lot. You’ll be able to watch the documentary when you’re much older.”

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll put this back.”

As she leaves, she calls out “When are you gonna be done?”

In a documentary that is extraordinary not just for its level of access to its subject, but for its subject’s unusual level of self-awareness, it is testament to the power of children that no moment tells us more about the life of Robbie Williams.

Robbie Williams is streaming from 9pm tonight on Netflix