In short, Welcome to Wrexham remains a brilliant watch, and the remarkable story of what McElhenney and Reynolds have done with the club hasn’t lost any of its luster. There are pitfalls galore here, but they sidestep them with great artistic agility, and the allure of this strange, compelling experiment resonates more than ever before.
It’s that most tantalizing of shows—one that you feel should be good, that has you constantly leaning in expecting it to be good, but just never quite gets there. In other words, it’s a tease; it takes you a while to quit, but by the third or fourth episode, you start to realize there’s no heart.
In the moment of viewing, it overrides my instinct to want to criticize the puffery of it all, the flimsy foundation of pure adrenaline, the absence of the artistic impulse to say anything actually meaningful. I just opened a bottle of wine, hit play, and before I knew it, five immensely entertaining episodes had passed.
It’s not going to change the world, and in 10 years you won’t see it on a list of the greatest comedies of the 2020s, but it’s smart, it’s ridiculous, and it’s defiantly unique in both style and substance. For six half-hour episodes, the world of Dick Turpin makes for a lovely escape.
It’s hard to say if Owen’s performance is a worthy tribute to Spade (you get the sense that they could have called him anything, and the “Spade” persona doesn’t really add much beyond a shortcut for backstory), but what’s undeniable is the subtle strength of his performance, and the understated brilliance of the show itself.
Reacher proves once again that it’s not just a good show, but a great one. Eleven stars out of five. It is also—obviously—a really bad one. But its badness is absolutely flawless, ultimately only contributing to its greatness.
Despite this laundry list of great characters, what differentiates this season from the last is that the writers are telling a more intimate story. It’s ridiculous in several facets, but the absurdity has a way of contributing to, not detracting from, that intimacy. The characters become more riveting with each twist.
The Gold rises to the top of the genre for its keen understanding of pace and character, and the unique ability to weave various far-flung threads into a cohesive whole. It’s not easy, but they make it look that way, and in the process they’ve created one of the best crime shows of the decade.
It probably helps to be a sports fan and it probably helps to like the two protagonists in the first place, but it’s also true that none of that is necessary. When the adornments are stripped, only the telling of the story remains, and I’m not sure there’s another show out there, fiction or non, that tells it better.
