TV Review: Sunderland ‘Til I Die – Series 1

This eight part documentary series on Netflix follows Sunderland A.F.C.’s horrific 2017/2018 season, where they found themselves getting relegated to League One in a campaign where they were tipped to return to the Premier League after their relegation in the 2016/2017 season.

The most interesting part of this series is seeing how quickly everything went downhill for Sunderland, this series was clearly commissioned with the expectation that they would bounce back, but then everything that could go wrong did so.

Sunderland ‘Til I Die doesn’t only give us an insight in to the club, but it also has a strong focus on the ordinary fans and followers of the club, highlighting how important football is in the community and what the club means to them. It’s interesting to see this dynamic and how profoundly some of these people love the club. It makes their demise all the more gut-punching for the audience, unless you of course support a rival, in which case, you’re going to love it.

You’ll get an in depth look at the club… From the Chief Executive to the Caterers, everyone plays their part in this documentary and it’s intriguing to see how much the threat of relegation can affect these people. We often don’t consider that behind the scenes, situations like these can have a devastating effect on the working class. Which makes some of the decisions and attitudes from players even more frustrating to watch… (I’m talking about you Jack Rodwell!)

If you’re a football fan, then this is a must-watch documentary. It’s an interesting watch, very well made and it’s quite easy to binge as well! (Episodes range between 30 and 40 minutes.) I would have liked to have seen some dressing room footage like we saw in the Amazon Manchester City documentary, but that’s just a small niggle and nothing major.

A lot of these sports documentaries usually highlight things when they’re going well, so to watch something where almost nothing is going well is an almost refreshing change, and helps to make Sunderland ‘Til I Die unique.

I give Sunderland ‘Til I Die an 8/10.