Twelve years after the Leveson inquiry and the closure of News of the World, the British press are having a reckoning on Netflix. Recent celebrity documentaries Beckham and Robbie Williams, and the final season of TV drama The Crown, have painted a portrait of the UK tabloids as cruel, sadistic and predatory of its homegrown celebrities.
While criticism of the British tabloids – particularly the ethics and methods of the News of the World – is often justified, the specifics offered by all three shows fall flat. Focusing on the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Princess Diana, Robbie Williams and David Beckham were each at the height of their fame, they prioritise individual stories over the big picture.
In doing so, these Netflix releases paint specific paps and a broad, amorphous “press” as demons, but ignore the broader socio-political forces, corruptions and collusions uncovered by Leveson in 2012 and the #MeToo movement in 2017.
According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, mass-market pop culture operates by a “20-year-rule” which sees trends and preoccupations return every two decades. This makes the turn of the millennium ripe for nostalgic and critical reflection in the 2020s.
The Crown explores the death of Princess Diana 25 years after her death. Robbie Williams tells the story of the singer, 25 years after the release of his biggest song, Angels. And Beckham explores the aftermath of the footballer’s infamous World Cup red card, 25 years on.
While these shows all try to claim part of the noughties nostalgia trend, they feel politically and contextually vacant. They each miss the opportunity to rigorously critique constructions of celebrity in the 1990s and 2000s.
The millennium press
Something all three shows miss is how textured and transitional the media landscape of the period was. By 1998, only 8% of editorial in The Sun and The Mirror could be classed as “public affairs” – the rest focused on gossip, sports, or both.
Inevitably, as celebrity culture became news, news also became gossip and both categories disintegrated into what we now call “clickbait”.
In the 2000s, internet publishing and blogging also changed the way news was circulated and reported. As literary critic Jane Hu argues: “The commercial internet generated an economy of attention that rewarded stories that were at once sensationalist and relatable – personal and universal – in a drive for content that would go viral among the broadest range of readers.”
This changed not only the way stories were reported, but how subjects of those stories were treated. As The Crown dolefully shows, one picture of Princess Diana could sell for millions to print newspapers in 1997. A decade later, the economy of attention cultivated by internet journalism would drive the price of those pictures down, even as the demand for content rose. Photos were now readily available online for free, and regular people could upload favourite “spotted” photos of their favourite celebrity for anyone to see, making the work of the paparazzi less valuable.
The Crown
The final season of The Crown covers the last eight months of Princess Diana’s life. The late princess’s treatment at the hands of her husband, the royal family and the British press had previously been covered in eight hour podcasting deep dives, various documentaries, and the Oscar nominated film, Spencer (2021).
These works largely stressed how sexist cultural responses to Diana were both before and after her death, when she was depicted as “bitter”, “unbalanced” and “silly” by the British media.
For a drama once well regarded for the breadth – if not the accuracy – of its historical storytelling, The Crown’s monomaniacal fixation with the final weeks of Diana’s life marked a season one critic called “so bad it’s basically an out-of-body experience”.
Through fictionalised monologues from actors playing real photographers and journalists, the press compare themselves to “hunters” and “killers”. It’s as if the show – which was once semi-critical and adamantly contextual of the Royal family – wanted to reframe them as powerless innocents, exploited by the dastardly press.
Beckham and Robbie Williams
Unlike The Crown, the main characters in the documentaries Beckham and Robbie Williams are not only living subjects but also active participants in the programmes. This means they must balance the egos of their subjects, justified critique of the press intrusions they experienced, and appeals for audience sympathy, which often minimises the role of the celebrity in their own media dramas.
Beckham consults a litany of talking heads – former managers, teammates, Spice Girls and two suitably shame-filled paparazzi – to build a portrait of the footballer and his union with wife Victoria.
Produced by Beckham’s own company, the programme is a portrait of how the couple “see themselves”. This is reinforced by the errors journalists have found in the narrative Netflix presents. These include exaggerations of the level of hostility Beckham experienced at Manchester United and cuts in footage which imply he was fouled at times he wasn’t.
When it’s done right, and particularly with the benefit of hindsight, critiques of the tabloids adhere with wider critique of other institutions – like the royal family, music industry, or Premier League football. In doing this, they can show how hostile to difference or dissension our dominant systems really are.
Two things can be true. The Beckhams can both manufacture tabloid interest to engender lucrative brand deals, and be unfairly stalked by predatory photographers and highly sexist critiques of their family, relationship, and parenting. As Williams notes: “When you become famous you want to give away the privacy you want to give away. You don’t wanna have your privacy taken from you.”
With their hyperfocus on sympathy for the celebrity, and lack of wider context, all three Netflix shows fall short of offering larger analysis of the British press.
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