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Daily Mirror
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Mark Jones

First look at Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney's Wrexham documentary answers key question

"Is this the kind of thing you ever thought you'd be talking about or thinking about?" a dumbfounded Rob McElhenney asks Ryan Reynolds.

"I'm actually f****** riveted!" is the scene stealing response.

Welcome to Wrexham, or rather Los Angeles, where the co-chairmen of the world's third oldest professional football club have just learned that the new Racecourse Ground pitch that they've spent £100,000 on ahead of their first full season at the helm hasn't taken to the North Wales soil.

Some 5,440 miles away crestfallen ground staff are picking up lumps of turf and mournfully dropping it back down onto the surface, and back in LA when McElhenney hears that what has happened could cause serious injury to a player he looks crushed.

Another £200,000 needs to be spent to fix the problem, and so of course it is.

Because, as we'll discover, while money might be less of an issue to the National League's least likely custodians as it is to the clubs they rub shoulders with, protecting the happiness, wellbeing and health of the people of Wrexham - from the players such as young homegrown hero Jordan Davies and superstar striker Paul Mullin, to the supporters who frequent the fittingly named The Turf pub - is the important thing here.

Which brings us to the key question which has surrounded the Hollywood duo's takeover ever since it was completed in November 2020. Why?

Is all of this time and effort - McElhenney and his son getting up at 4.20am to watch a crucial final day of the season clash at Dagenham and Redbridge from his living room which resembles a home cinema is featured - really worth it for a creator and star of the brilliant It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the Hollywood A-lister he got on board once he realised the sums involved?

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney completed their takeover in November 2020 (Getty Images)

This show, of course, is the reason why they hope it is. But will the 25-minute episodes streamed on Disney+ get to the bottom of just why they zeroed in on a town in north east Wales that borders Cheshire to the east? Yes, to an extent.

For while the link between Hollywood and the town 20-odd miles from Holywell will always be a curious one, on paper it really could have been any struggling club from an area that had seen better days that features here.

McElhenney, clearly the driving force of the pair, and Reynolds had reportedly looked at several lower league sides before deciding on Wrexham, but the history and backstory of the club - and the otherness of being a Welsh side playing in the English league system - is what won them over, once they had the rules explained to them.

For the audience here that honour goes to Humphrey Ker, a British actor and writer on McElhenney's Mythic Quest and the man deemed responsible for getting him into football.

Ker is on hand to explain the entire system of promotion and relegation to viewers who wouldn't be familiar with the concept, inviting them to imagine what it would look like if amusingly-named, and very real, minor league baseball teams such as the Toledo Mud Hens and the Sacramento River Cats could rise through the ranks and play the New York Yankees.

And so the idea of the American dream is born. In North Wales. With Mac from It's Always Sunny . And Deadpool. Who is Canadian.

Wrexham are spending their 15th consecutive season in the National League (AFP via Getty Images)

But it is that notion that none of this should make sense, and that none of these people should be interacting with each other in this setting - Ker's first meeting with the squad and manager Dean Keates is particularly awkward - which runs through the series and makes it watchable, funny and touching.

Viewers familiar with the area will chuckle when Wrexham is shown on a map for the first time, illustrating that it is emphatically not in England and also exposing Mold to the global stage. It was about time.

Surprisingly we also learn that McElhenney and Reynolds didn't know each other before all this began either, with the former calling on the latter's wealth, growing business acumen and, he concedes, greater fame, to add a bit of glitz and glamour to the takeover, which comes across as extremely genuine.

Yes, these are actors, and filming was taking place before their takeover had even been ratified with the supporters' board, but there is a sincerity to the two men as they take Zoom calls hunched over laptops that are perched on boxes and books in rooms in their respective mansions. They certainly seem to care more than a lot of other football executives do anyway.

For them this is about sport and the thrill of competition. McElhenney doesn't hide the fact that his true love is American Football and the Philadelphia Eagles, while Reynolds reflects on a sporting youth and the sad death of his father in 2015, a year before Deadpool came out. You get the sense that he hopes his success since would make his dad proud.

The pair are desperate for Wrexham to do well, something written all over a nervous McElhenney's face as he marches around a studio for an hour-and-a-half on the phone to Phil Parkinson, the almost mythical 'promotion expert' the owners have been told to hire as Keates' replacement by Ker and their football advisors.

Phil Parkinson was appointed as Dean Keates' successor as manager (Hadyn Iball / North Wales Live)

After the call McElhenney is worried that the former boss of Charlton, Bradford, Bolton and Sunderland will "think I'm an a******", but if he did he doesn't show it as he soon takes the job to the owners' clear delight.

You wouldn't expect anything less of course, but both McElhenney and Reynolds do come across well. Not that this documentary is about them, though.

And that's the secret to why they made it in the first place.

In a post-Covid Wrexham there are stories to be told and characters to warm to, but overall there is a desire for change.

An area that voted 59-41 in favour of Brexit in 2016, and then went from Red to Blue in the 2019 General Election, Wrexham just wants something fresh and different. It desires something to ascribe hope to and to believe there are better days ahead. Most importantly, it desires the Football League.

Wrexham are desperate to earn promotion back to the Football League (Hadyn Iball / North Wales Live)

This new season is the 15th since the club's relegation from League Two, and as we learn more about the fans - the real stars here - we see that going back up really is all they want. That will cure everything, literally in the eyes of seriously ill supporter 'Scoot', or Annette whose bond with the club grew after the passing of her husband.

Promotion, and that elevation in status, is all that matters.

"I'm going to live in a cave if we don't make it this year," says Wayne Jones, the landlord of The Turf, in one scene.

That revelation is met with a man at the bar asking supporter Shaun Winter what 'his Gemma' will say if he was to celebrate said promotion with an enormous party. "She's left me mate, doesn't matter," comes the quick reply, before attentions turn back to the season.

The owners aim to return Wrexham to the Football League (Copyright 2022, FX Networks. All Rights Reserved.)

Indeed we end up spending a bit of time with Shaun as he explores his relationship with his kids and mental health through the medium of football - "it's everything, you know? More than having a pint" - and while such sentiments are perhaps second nature to some of us, and yes the Bill Shankly misquote does make an appearance, it really won't be for an American audience whose football understanding largely comes from Ted Lasso and the Premier League.

This ultimately is a show for them, but it is an enjoyable one for us too.

So why Wrexham? Well there's a story there, just as there is in hundreds of disaffected towns up and down the country.

And actors go where stories are.

The first two episodes of Welcome to Wrexham will be available to stream on Disney+ on Thursday, August 25

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