In the wake of Brooklyn Beckham's explosive Instagram posts targeting his parents, the media landscape has been saturated with coverage. From news reports and memes to TikTok deep dives and newspaper thinkpieces, every angle of the Beckham family feud has been dissected. "Brooklyn Beckham is doing his best," declared the New York Times, while BuzzFeed urged readers to "believe adult children when they speak out against their toxic parents." The Independent framed it as "every mother's worst nightmare." Amid this cacophony, Channel 4 has stepped in with Beckham: Family at War, a documentary that attempts to carve out its own niche but ultimately falls flat.
A Baffling Primetime Offering
Beckham: Family at War is a 30-minute primetime documentary that feels like a triumph of noise for noise's sake. It consists of a lorryload of content creators flapping their hands and offering no new information or insight into the ongoing drama. The show opens with a wildly plucky introduction, juxtaposing global events like "Trump and Greenland, tension in the Middle East and ICE in Minnesota" with Brooklyn's "online honesty bomb," setting the tone for a breathlessly ridiculous narrative.
Surface-Level Storytelling
The documentary provides a surface-level explanation of the story, focusing on a young man severing ties with his apparently controlling family. This might have been useful for a mainstream novice audience, but the entire production is geared towards terminally online individuals who already know the drama in forensic detail. These are not the viewers likely to tune into Channel 4 on a midweek evening, making the target audience bafflingly misaligned.
Told via talking heads who range from people with Instagram accounts to those with TikTok followers, the recapping is shallow. We see posts they made reacting to the story, followed by their reactions to their own posts from a dingy talking-head dungeon. One contributor sets the baseline level of expertise by saying, "I looked at his story and I was like 'Oh my God.'" This highlights the lack of substantive analysis throughout.
Missing Substance and Context
Beckham: Family at War skims over the biggest reverberations of the story. It briefly mentions that DJ Fat Tony provided "much-needed context" on This Morning regarding claims about Brooklyn's wedding, and that archive footage of the Beckhams shows "the awks moments kept coming." Some substance arrives in the form of a psychologist and a resilience coach, who contextualise the difficulties of growing up in the public eye, along with a discussion on trademarking children's names. However, these elements are quickly waved away, as if the producers are embarrassed to take any of it seriously.
A Celebration or a Mutation?
If viewed sympathetically, one could argue that Beckham: Family at War is a celebration of a media event that briefly united the country. In this sense, it resembles a weird mutation of shows like I Love the 1980s, where paid talking heads overenthusiastically react to past events. Yet, the Brooklyn Beckham saga is so recent that there's no space for meaningful context, making it more akin to I Love This Thing on Instagram That Literally Only Just Happened.
Both-Sides Approach and Team Drama
The interviewees carefully both-sides the issue. For every expression of sympathy towards Brooklyn, depicting him as a clueless nepo-baby ragdoll caught between powerful families, there is praise for David and Victoria Beckham's impenetrable brand management. Perhaps the most telling moment is when an interviewee proudly declares himself "Team Drama," emphasising that the main appeal is the messiness and public nature of the feud, rather than the facts or individuals involved.
In essence, Beckham: Family at War is The World at War for people who've just been banged on the head. It's an exhausting, 30-minute exercise in adding to the noise without offering clarity or depth. As the documentary airs on Channel 4, it serves as a reminder of how media can sometimes prioritise spectacle over substance, leaving viewers more bewildered than informed.
