Coming off the success of the 2023 Netflix docuseries Beckham, which chronicled the life and ascent of footballer David Beckham, we’re now blessed with Victoria Beckham, a series about David’s counterpart and life partner, she of Spice Girls and fashion designer fame. Produced by the same production company (and the Beckhams themselves), the new series features some of the same charming banter between the couple (maybe not as memorable as what’s in Beckham) but it really wants you to know that, despite her past images, Victoria has evolved and is a woman who wants to be taken seriously in the fashion world.
Opening Shot: A montage of archival news clips shows Victoria Beckham (a.k.a Victoria Adams, a.k.a. Posh Spice) in her Spice Girl heyday, walking with the rest of the singing group, holding hands with her then-boyfriend David Beckham. The news footage grows increasingly more hostile, at first explaining who Victoria is, but soon, the reporters and other voices on the tape start to exhibit Post Spice fatigue, criticizing her for a lack of talent and media-hungry persona. Spliced into these older clips are shots of present-day Victoria lifting weights, as if to prove to us she’s still here and strong as ever.
The Gist: If you know anything about Victoria Beckham at all, chances are, you’ve already absorbed some of the information in the new docuseries about her life. Raised in Hertfordshire, England, Victoria was a theater kid, a lover of song and dance who found fame after reading about an open call in the newspaper and auditioning for a girl group that would become The Spice Girls. But just a few short years later, the group had broken up, Victoria would marry David Beckham and become the most famous WAG (short for wives and girlfriends of famous athletes, but you knew that already) of all.
The series features interviews with folks like Eva Longoria, Tom Ford, Donatella Versace and Anna Wintour; while Longoria is a genuine longtime friend, it seems that Ford and Wintour are also here to lend professional credibility to Beckham’s fashion business. (In one peculiar scene, Beckham describes her excitement about being asked to model for a Marc Jacobs ad campaign that was photographed by Juergen Teller. Teller is also on hand to discuss the creative idea behind the campaign, but when we see the photos, Beckham says, “When I first saw those pictures, I was horrified. It was very much poking fun at me.” That’s the last word on Beckham’s relationship with Jacobs and Teller and it’s odd because it comes across as if Beckham is hurt by it, but in fact, she has come to embrace it, even recreating it as an ad for her own brand it ten years later.)
Beckham addresses mostly superficial stuff here: her reputation as a grumpy starlet, her identity as a WAG. While she is open about the media’s poor treatment of her, hounding her for her weight, and her talents (or lack of, as many critics suggest), she also avoids topics like infidelity (which was already covered in Beckham, to a controlled degree), or the speculation of a rift with her son Brooklyn. This series doesn’t make any major revelations. Like Beckham, the series is essentially a puff piece, a nice bit of PR to remind us that there’s more to this person than meets the eye.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The obvious take is that this series is simply an offshoot of Beckham, but it’s also kind of fun to take in documentaries like this alongside others that reflect the same era and offer more context. Robbie Williams is another eponymous Netflix doc that features a British pop star dealing with the highs and lows of a career in the limelight, and Apple TV+’s The Super Models, about the rise of the era of supermodels in fashion, also feel like they would make compatible companion viewing, offering a look at superstardom and how people can come out of it on the other side.
Our Take: Victoria Beckham is a look at the life and career of a woman who has undergone several transformations over the three decades she has spent in the public eye. And because Victoria herself is in control of the narrative as a producer of this series, the show is also a bit of a commercial for her fashion business, as all the historical bits are meant to set up the current version of who she is, a highly successful designer with a show at Paris Fashion Week.
The reason that Beckham and now Victoria Beckham are watchable is because both David and Victoria grew up as regular folks, middle class-ish, and are able to project that humility of knowing what it’s like to not be famous. And here, Victoria also is able to reflect on the eras of her fame where she was kind of lost and confused; after she left the Spice Girls, she discusses an aimless solo career and her role as a WAG whose only job was to shop and court attention at David’s soccer matches. She acknowledges that these were low points in her life which earned her bad press because they made her seem vapid, and doesn’t really dispute that it wasn’t a great look.
She often brings up – and disputes – the public criticism that she never smiles. (Annoying that she has to even do that but it’s a stigma that has followed her for years.) But hindsight is 20/20 and she also seems at peace with those past versions of herself, justifying her actions and her unsmiling face – and she is clearly happy to have found success working in a field she loves. Of this change in herself, she explains, “I became a simpler, more elegant version of myself, and I went to work.” She also adds candidly, “I buried those boobs in Baden-Baden,” alluding to the fact that she made a deliberate effort to destroy her image as a slick, phony WAG, had her implants removed, and softened her entire persona.
The series spends a lot of time on Victoria’s fashion and preparations for her Paris fashion show – this is less a biographical show, and more a behind the scenes look at one woman’s big moment. The series succeeds when we see her in her element with her parents, with her husband and kids. At least, that’s what we want to see most of, and it’s what’s most interesting. This show obviously wants to make a case that she’s a serious designer, and she is, there’s no disputing that. But the balance is off. Victoria as a successful fashion mogul, okay, fine, while that is the story that’s at the heart of this series, the honest truth is that the public is still mostly interested in seeing the private person and understanding who she is while she’s among the people who know her best.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: At the end of the first episode, Victoria explains that after being introduced to fashion designer Roland Mouret, he took her under his wing to mentor her in the industry. Mouret recognized that her biggest impediment to the fashion world was her reputation as a pop star and wife of a soccer player. “To make the dream become a reality, we had to kill the WAG,” Mouret explains.
Performance Worth Watching: We can never get enough of David Beckham, mostly because he adds some necessary levity. While Victoria does have a sense of humor and is clearly not as sour and serious as she’s made out to be, David is downright silly, interjecting Dad jokes and playfully poking fun of his wife. (There aren’t really any standout moments like there were in Beckham, where David calls out Victoria for her upper-middle-class upbringing, it seems like some of the best bits about her childhood got used in that series.)
Memorable Dialogue: “People thought I was that miserable cow who never smiled. And they were not wrong.”
Our Call: I understand that in order for Victoria Beckham to not retread much of the same ground as Beckham there needed to be a new hook, and Victoria’s fashion career is it. But that fact that this show was preceded by her husband’s series, which was filled with charming, memorable moments, is detrimental to its success. Victoria is a woman to be respected, and her story is interesting enough, but only her most devoted fans and fashionistas will probably care about watching the whole thing through. Try out episode one for some good retro gossip, and then SKIP IT.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.