{"id":305311,"date":"2025-07-31T01:01:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T01:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305311\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T01:01:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T01:01:19","slug":"built-in-birmingham-brady-the-blues-review-stick-that-in-your-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305311\/","title":{"rendered":"Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues review | “Stick that in your documentary”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birmingham City Football Club meet Tom Brady in Prime Video\u2019s Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues. Here\u2019s our review.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cStick that in your documentary, lads,\u201d wrote a Peterborough United fan on social media, in the aftermath of a particularly high-profile match in Birmingham City Football Club\u2019s 2024\/2025 season.<\/p>\n

That fan? They got their wish, along with a real-time reaction from club top brass. It\u2019s in episode five.<\/p>\n

Still, by the time of the match in question, it was a pretty open secret that such a documentary was on the way, and most football followers know the format well by now. Behind the scenes footage, on-camera interviews and a smattering of fan insights. Drop all the episodes, and watch the viewing numbers roll in, all while trying to find an angle that hasn\u2019t been covered by the many rival documentaries (there\u2019s a lot of them) already out there.<\/p>\n

The subject this time is Birmingham City, and I have to declare my colours up front: they\u2019ve actually made one of these things about my own team. I\u2019m perfectly au fait with the umpteen disappointments and difficulties of the club, and I was at a good number of the matches on screen across the five episodes here. I declare that, as I\u2019m not likely to be the most impartial reviewer of Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues. Approach what follows with caution.<\/p>\n

Commercially at least, the high watermark for these programmes has been Welcome To Wrexham<\/a>, which blends stories of community with the tale of Hollywood money buying up a football club (Wrexham get lots of namechecks, unsurprisingly.) I got the sense of targeting that a little with Built In Birmingham, primarily by the amount it\u2019s willing to play its star card: Tom Brady, a man with appeal far beyond the Bull Ring and the Cornbow Centre down in Halesowen.<\/p>\n

Brady, a seven-time Superbowl-winning NFL star (of which we are reminded), is a (very welcome) minority shareholder in Birmingham City, and for international sales reasons \u2013 this show is going to around 200 countries on Prime Video \u2013 he\u2019s joint billed in the title.<\/p>\n

Picking up at the start of the 2023\/2024 season, we see an American businessman by the name of Tom Wagner becoming the new owner of the club, and bringing along his friend, Brady, as a stakeholder. There are question marks immediately: is Brady there just for profile, or will he be contributing and involved? The documentary explores that across its five episodes, as we start with a club where confidence is low, the ground is part-condemned (you can see the unsafe seats), and it feels like a minor miracle to not have an owner in prison.<\/p>\n

\"BuiltTom Brady, looking for the local brand of B&M Bargains<\/p>\n

The five episodes are ordered by chronology, but also there are little themed groups within them.<\/p>\n

The first episode is a corker. Entitled No Fear, it charts a season where in came new owners, hope was everywhere, and everything went wrong. Nobody is really spared either in telling this part of the story.<\/p>\n

Opening with a barb against Birmingham\u2019s city rivals Aston Villa, there\u2019s a fair amount of explaining about the game of football, and introducing of the league system, aimed it seems at American audiences. All fine. The fun \u2013 and this repeats across the whole show \u2013 is the cast of fans who share their views. The MVP in terms o working in front of the camera for me is Paul Collins, who patiently explains to newcomers the innate Birmingham City tradition of aiming bullets directly into their own feet (although his inclusion gets a mixed response from the club fanbase<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

Mavis and Pat come a close second, not least for their \u2018admiration\u2019 of head coach Chris Davies. Lovely to see Sukh Singh getting a good say, too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting who gets the microphone here and who doesn\u2019t, though. <\/p>\n

Wagner (who I think I\u2019d have liked more of over the course of the episodes), Brady, Steven Knight and assorted fans get their say, and the language strays occasionally towards the industrial. Mistakes are made, mistakes are owned. That said, I can\u2019t imagine it\u2019s 55 minutes that\u2019ll be enjoyed in the household of Wayne Rooney, who, well, doesn\u2019t come out of it well at all. \u201cI\u2019m a little worried about our head coach\u2019s work ethic,\u201d says Brady. Rooney doesn\u2019t get right to reply. Or if it was offered, he didn\u2019t take it up.<\/p>\n

Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders, offers both welcome and historical insights, as well as clips from his show (he\u2019s one of the many listed executive producers). A handful of the players get their moments in the sun across the series too \u2013 Alfie May, Jay Stansfield, Ethan Laird, Krystian Bielik \u2013 although plenty don\u2019t. <\/p>\n

For Birmingham fans, it\u2019s a shame for instance that we don\u2019t hear from Lukas Jutkiewicz or player of the season Christoph Klarer. You do, however, briefly get Troy Deeney\u2019s voice via a small piece of archive, and Simon Jordan on his radio show. Conflict, goes the clich\u00e9, is drama.<\/p>\n

Still, the challenge that Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues faces is twofold.<\/p>\n

Firstly, it has to keep looking for huge obstacles, when really, there aren\u2019t that many of them. The documentary notes the weight of expectation on the club as it dropped to League One, and spent unprecedented amounts of money in that division to try and get out. No guarantee of success certainly, and the initial predictions that Birmingham were \u2018in for a shock\u2019 aren\u2019t exactly namechecked.<\/p>\n

But get into the season proper, and a brief run around Christmas when games weren\u2019t being won is presented as a crisis, when in fact it was more of a \u2018we\u2019d better get that sorted out.\u2019<\/p>\n

At one stage, Alfie May \u2013 a striker introduced as signing with aspirations of Championship football, and sold days before this show was released! \u2013 is seen battling a goal drought. But it, like some of the pockets of stories the documentary focuses on, is set up, explained and sorted in minutes.<\/p>\n

May, incidentally, really comes across incredibly well.<\/p>\n

Further challenges include a potential major injury that isn\u2019t, being one point off the promotion spots, and a sort-of rivalry with former manager John Eustace that I don\u2019t remember as anything of the sort. The filmmakers are searching for dramatic mountains, and instead often have to work with a slightly muddy walk up the Lickey Hills.<\/p>\n

\"BuiltBirmingham City manager Chris Davies, teaching his players some new four-letter words.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a bigger issue, with critical hat on, then the Tom Brady storyline feels stretched.<\/p>\n

As a fan of the team, his involvement is quite something and I\u2019m still staggered it happened. But trying to find angles to weave him into the narrative for five episodes of the show is taxing.<\/p>\n

In the first episode or two, when a storied American superstar is nervous about going into a Birmingham pub, it\u2019s nicely set up that a world famous man is slightly wary of a Midlands boozer. By the end though, with Brady\u2019s trips to Birmingham not that frequent, we\u2019re left watching him commentating on the Superbowl thousands of miles away, and Birmingham boss Chris Davies talking about valuable he is, occasionally received a text message. I\u2019m sure he is valuable, but given the title of the documentary, I think it gets quite thin by the time he\u2019s considering giving a 30-minute speech to Cisco, and watching goals on his iPad (Tomoki Iwata\u2019s screamer gets a good airing, Birmingham fans will know.)<\/p>\n

The bits that make for better drama? Well, directors Gotham Chopra and Claudia Corbisiero are good at finding the human stuff. In episode three, Joys & Sorrows, striker Jay Stansfield goes to Exeter City, the club where his late father played, and it\u2019s really quite emotional as more of his family are brought into the story. <\/p>\n

Elsewhere, we got a glimpse into the family life \u2013 and sacrifices \u2013 of manager Chris Davies. We also find him not in the best of temper and addressing that. There are, er, \u2018occasions\u2019 when the cameras are asked to be turned off. It\u2019s humans, doing their best, often unvarnished.<\/p>\n

To its credit too, the documentary doesn\u2019t shy away from the less savoury elements of football support, the hooligan element, and racial discrimination. It doesn\u2019t spend much time on the subject, but it doesn\u2019t ignore it.<\/p>\n

\"BuiltJay Stansfield, an avid user of Right Guard, we\u2019re guessing.<\/p>\n

Concluding, then.<\/p>\n

Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues isn\u2019t entirely a warts and all documentary \u2013 I think Sunderland Til I Die is the high bar there \u2013 but it\u2019s an interesting one, skilfully concocted from cauldron of ingredients that don\u2019t easily mesh.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, if its focus had to serve one master rather than two, then there\u2019d be a tighter programme, but also, that\u2019d come at the cost of a narrower audience. Also, proving that you can never rely on Birmingham City to do what you expect, the team itself didn\u2019t throw up too many unexpected dramas, once the first episode was done. Sod\u2019s law. When you want the buggers to lose and make things tighter than they turned out, you can\u2019t even count on them to do that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all left nicely to continue the story, but for the programme itself to be elevated to the top tier, a closer coming together of the club, the community, and Tom Brady on the same continent feels to my untrained eyes a way forward. The season ahead promises to be a tougher one, and I\u2019d be surprised if the cameras aren\u2019t rolling already.<\/p>\n

The five episodes we\u2019ve got though so far? Well, I\u2019m a terrible reviewer of them. I found them absorbing and interesting. There have been Birmingham City documentaries before \u2013 I remember one when Karren Brady first ran the club<\/a>, and then with Barry Fry<\/a> shouting at people in a dressing room \u2013 but this is the most thorough and intriguing. <\/p>\n

Much like the team though, there\u2019s still some room for further improvement in the next season. And, much like the team, I\u2019ll be happy to watch more, thank you very much. KRO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham City Football Club meet Tom Brady in Prime Video\u2019s Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues. Here\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-305311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114945150237408919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}