Like many of you, I have been blazing through shows on all streaming platforms during the quarantine. After finishing Tiger King, I stumbled upon a miniseries called The English Game produced by Netflix about soccer (football) and decided to give it a watch. I ended up binge-watching all six episodes and loved every minute of it.
The English Game is set during Victorian England (1870’s to be a bit more precise). The series follows three historical figures of the sport, Fergus Suter (Kevin Guthrie), Arthur Kinnaird (Edward Holcroft), and Jimmy Love (James Harkness) and the evolution of the game. It was written and produced by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) and has some of the typical flair you would expect from a British historical drama.
Suter and Love are two Scottish soccer stars that are paid to leave Scotland and come play for the club Darwin in Lancashire. Kinnaird and his elitist buddies try their best to protect “their” game and do everything in their power to bend the rules in their favor. These same dudes are also in charge of the association that hosts the season, so the rules always seem to be convenient in their favor. No working-class team had won the FA Cup, and the “gentlemen” that ran the game were bent on keeping it that way.
Both Kinnard and Suter are caught up in class-politics of the late 19th century and are able to reach across those lines and find common ground and friendship in the game that they both love. Kinnard by the end can be considered a good guy after growing through a lot of personal issues and maybe my favorite character from the series. I won’t give all of the plot away because it is such a good show and you really should watch it.
The film doesn’t follow history to the letter. Dates are mushed together things happen faster than they did in real life. Suter eventually joins the club Blackburn and wins the FA cup the first time he makes it, but that isn’t exactly how it plays out in real life. Some of the drama can be drawn out, but it’s a British historical drama so that feels pretty on par with the others I’ve watched in my life.
The real draw for The English Game is the sports. This series, if briefly, satisfied my sporting needs and was entertaining the entire way. Watching how the game evolved from a bunch of players running around in a huddle until someone broke free to spreading players out in formations and the use of passing and strategy game great enjoyment to a guy that played soccer for four years in high school. I don’t know too much about the history of soccer, but I guarantee Vendetta writer Gavin Daly knows. The sets and costumes are amazing and it really feels like you are in Victorian England. The English Game is a show that you should watch not because you have nothing better to do during quarantine, but because it is a legitimately good series.
