Robbie Williams

Robbie Williams was not a vanity project. It was not just an ego party. It was mostly an anatomy of mental disintegration and, I think, his own catharsis. Williams is in many ways an anti-Beckham.

While it’s no David Bowie’s Cracked Actor, it delivers on broken boyband member: a devastating meditation on fame and its side effects.

The result is a totally unvarnished meta meditation on his journey. And from the euphoria of instant stardom to all of the adversity, hits and misses that came after, it becomes much more of a personal document than just another celebrity documentary.

Robbie Williams combines titillation and pity as effectively as its namesake does braggadocio and vulnerability.

Williams is articulate and thoughtful. But the format has an anaesthetised quality. The endless shots of Williams pacing around his house, or his face bathed in the glow of a laptop screen, are deadening. It plays out like an extended therapy session. Still, it’s an insight into the many downsides of fame.

It’s an ultimately joyless tale. Williams has said he hopes the viewing experience is as traumatic as the filming was for him – and I certainly didn’t come out of the other side of the four episodes feeling very hopeful.

Robbie Williams is more evidence that celebrity is an affliction and an addiction, which in turn leaves the series feeling like an opportunity to rubberneck at disaster. At the same time, Williams is so hard to empathise with. It turns out it’s surprisingly tricky to emotionally connect with someone when all you see is them – as this myopic documentary has proven to its own detriment.

For a viewer who has zero interest in Take That or Robbie Williams, this miniseries is still a very compelling study of ego, ambition, and mental illness; from the POV of a useful idiot from Stoke, (with admittedly a decent singing voice), fighting for sanity in the middle of a fame tornado. As an objective party, there is no denying Williams is an unsavoury character, who for much of his earlier life, was unable to form or maintain meaningful relationships, even unable to feel love, due to the extent of his ever deepening depression. In one scene, he discovers his Spice Girl(friend) has only accompanied him on holiday, in order to tip off the press, to boost her own failing career. Although there are many moments of emotional honesty - the dishonesty and lack of accountability, which prevails throughout the series, only exposes Williams' flaws further. The failure to credit Ray Heffernan for 'Angels'; the song which reignited and rescued Williams' career, or to ignore Karl Wallinger for writing 'She's the One', echoes loudly as he boasts about his mega-success. In a later episode, the cold and callous dismissal of his chief songwriter and kicking-boy, Guy Chambers, as a result of Williams' ego prevailing over common-sense, believing he can now write hit songs alone, leads to the dreadful 'RudeBox' record, a press backlash, and the disastrous live shows which follow. It could almost be a deleted scene from Spinal Tap, except there's nothing funny about it. During an earlier episode, in possibly an unintentional moment of modesty, Williams refers to himself as 'an entertainer,' rather than artist or musician. Even when his 'best mates' are introduced, all his relationships seem showbiz and fake. There is a real feeling of plasticity and surface level to Williams' career and life, which you wouldn't find in other exposés of bands or artists, undoubtedly because there is no real discernable artistic talent to be found behind the mask. Overall, the strongest part of the series, is the first half of the debut episode, which skims over a six-year period involving the meteoric rise of Take That, and the rapid decline of William's personal life. After this, there are strong moments, but it fails to live up to the series' opening. The most emotive and anxiety inducing segment features with the monstrous series of gigs at Roundhay Park, Leeds. The film-makers do a terrific job of placing the viewer in the middle of a waking nightmare, as Williams is forced to perform in front of 100k people, whilst having a debilitating panic attack and mental breakdown; no doubt caused by his years of substance abuse. Drugs is another area which is only spoken about in the first episode, but ignored in the rest of the series. Surprisingly, a rather gnarly scene where his private drug dealer, I mean, doctor, shoots him up backstage with 'steroids' is kept in the documentary. Williams' persona and behaviour, even when the narrative cuts to present day, echoes an interview the original RHCP guitarist Jack Sherman did in which he said of the band's frontman Anthony Kiedis: “I felt I was around something which was inhuman. Somebody that was like a cypher, that was just ambition with a skeleton, and power. Even if you look of pictures of (Kiedis) now, I ask you to find humanity in his face.” Being a Netflix production, there is somewhat of a happy (albeit forced) ending, as Williams eventually found a soulmate and wife in LA, a Hollywood mansion to loaf around in wrapped in Gucci, dogs bounding freely in their manicured estate; but most importantly, a gaggle of children, who clearly adore him. Occasionality, his young daughter pops into the room, almost like a nurse, checking on her patient. As someone who is indifferent to this series' protagonist and his career, it is reassuring to see the unconditional love of his children, as one absolute truth and foundation in a life which appears to have been mostly fast friends and make-believe. As the series concludes, and Williams closes the MacBook on the turbulent montage that is his past, there's no denying his present-day 100-yard stare and fragile mental state. He seems to be hanging in there, but only by a thread. Decades of (largely self-inflicted) trauma, and the deep wounds of mistakes and regrets, seem far from being fully healed.