The family that brands together...brands together, is the takeaway from the Curzon Mayfair theatre on Tuesday, 3 October, as the Beckham clan and their partners Netflix premiered the reality series for which David and Victoria Beckham inked the reported $20-million contract back in 2020. Put another way, the deal was cut as Netflix was in its previous hot-buying mode, hoovering up every celebrity in sight, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for, reportedly, approximately five times the Beckham sum. The Beckhams and Netflix have stuck it out, and now the freshly-born thing is here. The product will need a bit of time out of the birthing suite for us to be able to tell whether it will gain any lasting traction, which is to say, numbers high enough to encourage a follow-on effort or efforts by both parties.

A modicum of long-pored-over (in Britain) laundry has been washed and aired by the Netflix vehicle. So: With a nod to the fact that these headlines will mean far more to any British person than to any American, including the 6 million or so of us who reside in greater Miami, here are a couple of ("spoiler alert!") the better nuggets: Yes, longtime Manchester United head-man Sir Alex Ferguson threw a soccer "boot" at a (far younger) Beckham in the locker room after a certain major loss back in the day. Scandal, right? Beckham reveals that he used the f-word at that particular soiree. Locker rooms after great losses can get a bit rough as the blame cake gets cut and served but...locker rooms, right? It's a fair bet that the walls of locker rooms worldwide have had a few curse words flung about within them.

And yes, a (far younger) Beckham had a fling as he was on loan to Real Madrid with his former PA, Rebecca Loos. Pretty much instantly upon the Netflix premier in London earlier this week, the coursing dogs of Fleet Street set out baying after Ms. Loos, only to find her now a happily-married mother of two and a yoga instructor in Norway.

Highly unclear is whether any of that, or any of the rest of the series, counts as "hard-hitting." In purely low-ball American terms, reality-tv mom-ager-for-the-ages Kris Jenner would likely say no.

But in the grander scheme of things — which is to say, because everybody involved in Beckham is British, and further, because the actual Beckham family unit by definition does not resemble the Kardashian family unit or the Windsors of Montecito family unit — these narrative tropes count as hard-hitting enough. By enough is meant that, unlike their Netflix-reality stablemates Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Beckhams have real-world occupations other than just the marketing of themselves, although that, too, is a big part of what they now do.

The series narrative does rather quietly deliver this extraordinary arc: David Beckham built a considerable business empire off his prodigious football talent, which is difficult for most of our most heralded professional-class athletes to do, especially as or after their on-field careers wane, and he has deftly grown that business empire to the point that he has become a justly-heralded football executive, with all that that entails, all the corporate pressures, all the limelight, and the microscopic attention that will be paid to his every choice. That's really rare, and really difficult to accomplish. It's the reason the series is entitled simply "Beckham." In Britain, and in large tracts of the world in which football is beloved, no other word need be used.

The three accomplishments then, becoming a star footballer, becoming a businessman, and then becoming successful enough at business to buy a chunk of a professional football team form the proscenium under which the narrative of Netflix's Beckham plays out. However spectacular, Mr. Beckham's many professional accomplishments — the actual ways in which he keeps the empire up and running — aren't such the focus here because the hours of football practice back in the day or the minutiae of the negotiations to corral a Lionel Messi in Miami don't necessarily make for riveting tv.

The message from this vehicle is Shakeaspearean in the non-tragic sense: Long road traveled, but all's well that ends well. The Beckhams are doing just fine, thank you.