TV Series Review: The English Game

written during Thanksgiving break

So last evening my family and I finished the first part of season 6 of The Crown. And I was just craving another period drama, and I remembered after finishing Ted Lasso, I looked up shows that were similar to it, and there was a list of shows and one of them was The English Game. This is one of the few TV shows or movies that I walked into without knowing anything about the plot or characters. I just remembered that Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, created this show and I was all for it, because Downton Abbey is one of my favorite shows.

The English Game takes place in the 19th century in London, and a team of football players named The Etonians are upper class and members of the Football Association. They have credentials, influence and, above all, money. However, there are a group of paper mill workers in the working class community of Darwen who also play football, and two players from Scotland, Fergus and Jimmy, arrive in England ready to play because the cotton mill owner, James, recruits them to play so the team can win the FA Cup. However, the Old Etonians are unwilling to let these people play because they are poor and the Etonians want only rich people to play. Arthur is the leader of the Etonians and he comes face to face with Fergus, who just wants a shot at accomplishing his dreams of being a footballer. One of the messages I learned about this miniseries is that perseverance is key if you want to follow your dreams, and if you really want to follow your dreams you have to push past the rejection, the humiliation, and the criticisms from others. Fergus learns how to not give up on himself even when the going gets rough, especially in one crucial scene where James and the Cotton Club members propose wage cuts for all the workers at the cotton mills. It also puts a strain on Fergus’s teammates when they find out that Fergus and Jimmy are the only footballers on the Darwen team who are being paid to play.

The show in some ways reminded me a lot of Ted Lasso. In a later season of Ted Lasso, one of the star players on the AFC Richmond team, Sam Obisanya, is almost recruited by Edwin Akufo, who is a multimillionaire who wants Sam to play on Nigeria’s team. He bribes Sam with all sorts of material wealthy things. He even has authentic Nigerian food catered to Sam. He wants to make money off of Sam, but Sam is loyal to AFC Richmond, so he turns down the offer. Edwin gets really upset and tears Sam down, but Sam is confident in himself so he isn’t swayed by Edwin’s insults. It reminded me of The English Game a little because Fergus needs to make a tough decision whether to join John Cartwright’s team, Blackburn, or stay with the Darwen team. Even though Cartwright promises him better benefits if he goes to their team, it puts a strain on his relationships with his Darwen teammates because not only are Jimmy and Fergus getting paid to play (they weren’t supposed to get paid to play football as a rule) but they go to the rival team. When Fergus and Jimmy go to the pub to hang out, their teammates get upset and tell them to leave since they betrayed them. But after Jimmy gets injured (just a warning, the scene where you see Jimmy’s injury is pretty graphic. I didn’t see it coming though because I didn’t read much about the show before watching it) his teammates began to have more sympathy for him, and gradually Fergus regains trust with his Darwen teammates when they realize that he wasn’t going to put on airs just because he went on the Blackburn team. It also reminded me of another moment in Ted Lasso, when Nathan Shelly, who was the kit-boy on AFC Richmond’s team, was recruited by Rebecca’s ex-husband, Rupert Mannion, to join the Manchester team. After a lot of self-actualization and realizing that Rupert is not a great guy to work with, he begs the AFC Richmond team to let him back on the team again. They let him back on, but they also let him know how egotistical he acted. I think Nathan realized that he really did love AFC Richmond and felt more at home there than he did on the Manchester team.

I love the romance between Fergus and Martha Almond, as well as the romance between Jimmy and Doris. When Fergus meets Martha she doesn’t warm up to him at first because she also has a young daughter she needs to protect and she doesn’t trust anyone to help her. However, as Fergus and Martha get to know each other, they develop a deep love for one another. Jimmy and Doris hit it off really well, and they get married. Fergus tells Jimmy to focus on football, but he is so overjoyed at getting married and Fergus realizes he wants Jimmy to be happy. Fergus also realizes he really loves Martha and wants to be more than friends, but we find out that Martha was in a relationship with Mr. Cartwright, the owner of the Blackburn team that Fergus is joining, and her daughter is technically Mr. Cartwright’s kid. Mr. Cartwright wants Martha to forgive him and still wants her to love him, but that also puts a strain on his marriage. Martha encourages Fergus to persevere and not give up on himself, and they develop an incredible bond together.

I also found a lot of similarities between the show and other stuff I have watched and read. There is a character named Alma, and she is married to Arthur, who runs the Etonian football team and is on the football association board. Alma suffers a miscarriage and it seems like she has nothing left to live for because she was really looking forward to becoming a mother, but then she goes to a women’s refuge called Brockshall, and she finds herself helping out Betsy, a young woman who works with Martha but got fired from her job. Betsy has her baby, but Mrs. Cartwright, who runs the refuge, gives the baby away to an adoption agency. Alma digs at her for this information, and after a lot of teeth pulling, Mrs. Cartwright finally gives her the book with the list of children given away for adoption. Alma does everything in her power to get Betsy’s baby back, and she goes to the adoption agency herself and takes the baby away. The woman at the agency fights her, but Alma’s husband, Arthur, stops the woman and lets Alma leave with Betsy’s baby so she can give her back to Betsy. It reminded me of this movie I watched a while ago called True Mothers, a Japanese language film about a couple who adopt a child after being unable to conceive, and their later confrontation with the young mother who wants her son back from the couple. Like in The English Game, the women whose babies are taken to the agency are mostly born out of wedlock or from unwanted pregnancies, and during the 19th century there was a lot of shame and judgment associated with a woman being pregnant if she was unmarried. It reminded me, too, of the judgment Ethel encountered in the show Downton Abbey. Ethel meets a soldier named Charles Bryant when he is staying at Downton during the war, and she becomes pregnant with his child. She faces a lot of shame and stigma for having a child out of wedlock and she has to give up the child to Charles’ parents, who do not respect her.

What this movie showed me was the spirit to persevere is so important. Fergus faced a lot of challenges when competing against Arthur and the other Etonians. He and his team didn’t have as much status or wealth as they did, and they also faced financial challenges and unemployment. However, Fergus had to overcome his own self-doubt and fears in order to help lead the team to victory. He also learned that it’s okay to accept help from others, and that even though he faced a lot of painful moments in his past (his father is an alcoholic who abuses his mom and sisters) he overcame each hurdle after another. Arthur also realized that he wanted to make football accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. I think helping Alma get Betsy her baby back may have given him a sense of purpose outside of his work or what his father expected of him. Arthur’s dad set a lot of expectations for his son, and became disappointed when he didn’t meet those expectations, but Arthur realized through working together with Fergus that football really did bring him happiness and wasn’t just something he did just to make himself look good for others.

This was overall a really good show. And the music was absolutely amazing. I found myself listening to the Downton Abbey soundtrack quite a lot these past few weeks. It just has so much incredible music and it is absolutely beautiful. Just like Downton Abbey, The English Game has amazing music as well. The music kind of reminded me of The Crown‘s music score because it sounded intense and had a somber tone, which I think was appropriate considering it was a drama. I didn’t know most of the actors in The English Game, I only knew a couple of the actors, and one was Daniel Ings because he played Prince Philip’s secretary Mike in seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown. At first it was hard to recognize him because Mike doesn’t wear a beard in The Crown, but he does when he plays the role of Francis Marindin, who was on the football board and on the Eton team in The English Game. Another actor I recognized was Kate Phillips, the actress who played Venetia Scott, Winston Churchill’s secretary, in season 1 of The Crown. She played Laura Lyttelton, the wife of one of Arthur’s close friends, and she is also Alma’s friend.