Welcome to Wrexham

Season 2 of Welcome to Wrexham has lost none of its heart and continues to embrace what made it so great in the first place: authenticity and highlighting the community and people of Wrexham.

You don’t have to care about football to find Welcome to Wrexham an emotional, funny, even eye-opening documentary. Be warned, though: watch it long enough and you might find yourself idly googling the Wrexham scores.

Obviously there’s a time lag, so any football fan will know how the season ended, and there is a sense that the locals are now getting more camera-savvy. But that doesn’t make the net effect any less life-affirming.

You fear for manager Phil Parkinson if he can’t keep getting promoted: one mid-table finish and he could be out, not for lack of footballing nous but because he’s not established an entertaining TV persona. .... Just as they have saved the club financially, however, Reynolds and McElhenney can always lend the show their star power. Now they have help on that front as the opening episode’s centrepiece sees King Charles III visit the stadium.

The more we see of the community around the team, one that has become bigger via the series but at its core is still what binds the residents of the town together, the more we want to watch.

They [Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney] strike a nice balance between giving a damn and offering the right kind of non-meddling support (which includes opening their wallets when needed). More importantly, Welcome to Wrexham is generally good TV, and it continues to home in on worthy tales within the bigger story.

For a show based on the tensions involved in moving a team up the arcane ladder of English football, one can discover the denouement merely by reading the sports pages. But that would ruin the fun, which is considerable—the king's visit prompts the team owners to take an etiquette class, which can't not be amusing. And while the program is ostensibly a soccer show, it isn't just about competition but community, obsession, addiction (to sports) and the very personal stories of very nice people.

The rags-to-riches premise might now feel flawed – Wrexham stopped being scrappy underdogs when the cash and cameras arrived – but it remains heartwarming and full of earthy humour.

[Season 2] seeks to demonstrate an even more expansive portrait of Wrexham. Perhaps the largest — and most rewarding — adjustment is the introduction to Wrexham’s women’s team.

WTW needs to work as a documentary (OK, a football docusoap) and not a soft-focus promotional film. That said, it’s still a lovely series, with a big, pumping heart, even if it is floating in glutinous syrup.