The series consists of four episodes, in which the director tells in a very sincere and frank way how an ordinary guy from London grew up not only into one of the world’s legendary footballers, but also into an international celebrity – with a wife who is an absolute world star.

“Beckham is based on frank interviews with the footballer himself, but not only: his wife Victoria Beckham, David’s parents, his former Manchester United teammates, sworn rivals, best friend, former coach, team secretary who worked for decades – in short, everyone who knows what we want to know. The only thing more impressive than the cast of characters is the honesty, and sometimes painful frankness, of the speakers who talk about the stunning ups and downs of Beckham’s life.

The first episode begins with David tending to the beehives he keeps near the Beckhams’ Cotswolds country house. We are also shown excerpts from childhood home movies made by his father, Ted. In these videos, he and David talk about the young years of the boy who, at the age of 12 or 13, was placed in the hands of Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson – who almost immediately offered the teenager a contract.

Thousands and thousands of hours spent alone with the ball in the small backyard of his family’s home, combined with the work of his coaches, created a footballer with a style of play so refined that it allowed him to essentially score goals from anywhere on the field. On the first day of the 1996 Premier League season, Beckham scored a goal for Manchester United from halfway up the field, a strike that was seen around the world and instantly made him a household name.

A few months later, while watching TV with a teammate, Beckham saw the Spice Girls, pointed to the girl who called herself Posh Spice, and immediately announced that he was going to marry her. Soon, David and Victoria’s romance captivated the nation. “I just liked her,” Beckham now explains it this way. “I just liked him,” says Victoria, who immediately made it clear to Beckham that although she didn’t care about football, she would take care of her husband. “Okay, that’s it,” David says of the beginning of the relationship. He adds: “It moved fast.”

Soon, David started getting out of the training camp and would drive four hours to London to see Victoria for 20 minutes. At one point he was photographed with her in the city, dressed in a sarong, and these photos in the tabloids caused a scandal in the country. And on the night before the decisive, epic 1998 World Cup match against Argentina, Victoria – on tour with the Spice Girls – called David and told him she was pregnant with their first child.

What happened the next day is a kind of compass for the entire documentary. If you’re a soccer fan, you already know that it was Argentine midfielder Diego Simeone who fouled and landed on the ground, and Beckham impulsively kicked Simeone in the calf. Simeone theatrically fell to the ground, clutching his leg; and Beckham was shown a red card by the referee and sent off from the match, which England lost, thus eliminating him from the tournament.

After this incident, Beckham became the most hated man in England. “I wish there was a pill you could take to erase the memories,” David says. “I made a stupid mistake.” Before he began to hide from the public, he was shouted at and spat at by strangers; virtually everyone in the country, from the England coach to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, blamed him entirely for England’s shameful loss. A London pub hung a doll dressed in Beckham’s uniform. People sent him bullets to the Manchester United offices. When he was introduced during away games, tens of thousands of fans shouted obscenities at him, and when Victoria showed up to watch her husband play, these tens of thousands sang vulgar, sexually explicit chants directed at her. “It’s only now, when I’m 47 years old, that I’ve started to reflect on it,” says David, recalling the death threats his parents received.

The main idea of the series is that the strength of their marriage helped them to survive the difficulties. And the Beckhams’ trademark humor, of course. During the interviews, they are fascinating to watch: they agree and disagree with each other, make fun of each other and themselves, and are even ready to air their dirty laundry a little – for example, when David told Victoria that he could not be present at the birth of their youngest son Cruz (the couple has four children) because he was filming with Beyoncé and J.Lo. (Or how David asked Victoria to help him with his hair-while she was lying in a hospital bed after an epidural minutes after giving birth-so he could go talk to the press about their new baby.) They are also careful to comment on rumors of David’s infidelity during a difficult time in the early 2000s.

The most amazing thing, the director says in the series, is not that one of the most famous athletes of our time married one of the most famous pop stars of our time, but that both David and Victoria were able to turn their extravagant, youthful relationship into a true love, a marriage and a family that can withstand anything.

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Jon Fosse is a 64-year-old writer, a representative of postmodernism in Norwegian literature, known for his philosophical and unusual works in terms of form and rhythm. First of all, Fosse became famous for his dramatic works and is considered one of the most popular playwrights in the world, and in his native Norway he even gained the status of the “new Ibsen.” In general, the writer’s work covers a variety of genres: plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, and children’s books.

He made his debut in 1983 with the novel Red, Black. Among Fosse’s most famous works is the Septology trilogy, the third volume of which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2022. “Septology tells the story of an aging artist, Asle, who lives alone on the Norwegian coast and reflects on his life.

Jacques Testard, Fosse’s publisher, said in an interview with The Guardian: “Fosse’s fiction is magical, mystical and rooted in the landscape of the western fjords where he grew up.” Fosse writes in a language called Nynoshk, a so-called New Norwegian, a minority language in Norway, “which is a political act in itself.”

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His Vansday is a subtle, ironic coming-of-age drama with an original plot and a magnificent cast (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Gwendoline Christie, Jenna Ortega). The central figure of the series is teenager Wendy, the daughter of Morticia and Gomez Addams. She is going through a typical teenage crisis – she hates her parents and wants to run away from every school she is enrolled in, but this is complicated by the fact that she is an unusual teenager and must master her mystical abilities in addition to all the teenage problems. The girl finds herself in the school of Nevermore, where her mother once studied, and where she not only establishes relationships with friends and falls in love, but also has to deal with mysterious murders.

The jewel of the series is the 20-year-old American actress Jenna Ortega, who embodied the role of a thin, reflective girl named Wenzday with big eyes, two thin braids and perfect taste. Jenna was born in 2002 in California, her parents are of Mexican descent. At the age of 10, she was already acting in TV shows, and at 15 she won the prestigious Imagen Award for her role in the Disney series Harley’s Life, and the same year she starred in Iron Man.

In recent years, she has gained fame as a mystical movie star. Her filmography includes the mystical series “You”, which aired on Netflix, the horror movie “Astral: Chapter 2”, “Scream”, the movie “Nanny. Queen of Killers”. This year, the American fashion press called Ortega the “scream queen of Generation Z”. Having played in the films X and Scream, the actress proved to be one of the brightest new names in the horror genre. In total, the 20-year-old star has about 20 projects in her filmography, which makes her one of the most productive young actresses.

It was Jenna Ortega who was Tim Burton’s favorite during the casting of the series. It is said that it took just a few lines for her to be approved for the role – the 20-year-old actress was so organic in the image of the sarcastic Wenzday.

In the series, Jenna Ortega’s character is a real fashionista. In the original 1990s film, we were used to seeing Wesday in a black schoolgirl dress, and it was hard to imagine her as anything else, but Barton exceeded our expectations. Throughout the eight episodes of the series, Venzday offers us a truly sophisticated look at its gothic protagonist. From the very first scene, her classic black schoolgirl dress is modernized with pointy collars. And her prom dress? It’s by Alaia! The costumes for the show were designed by the legendary Colleen Atwood, who has created more than 10 films with Barton, including Alice in Wonderland, for which she won an Academy Award.

Venzday’s style has a lot in common with the actress’s own image. She loves white collars, lace, and black. Thus, at the presentations of the series, Ortega appears in black gothic dresses by Versace, Valentino and Saint Laurent. She also admits that her nails are now always painted black – just like Wenzday’s, of course.

Since 2016, the girl has been collaborating with stylist Enrique Melendez, whose concept is to pay tribute to each of Ortega’s new projects in her outfits. Well, it works brilliantly – just look at her look at the world premiere of Venzday in Los Angeles: a black Versace dress with transparent lace inserts, a thigh-high slit, and a matching veil.

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