The English Game, co-created and co-produced by Julian Fellowes, is currently streaming on Netflix. This six part drama (also partly co-written by Fellowes, together with a team of writers) sees the English class struggle played out on muddy football fields, in the last days of the nineteenth century. Most likely based on, or inspired by, the biography Arthur Kinnaird – First Lord of Football by Andy Mitchell it’s a fictionalised account of the early years of the FA championship. And it’s an account of the lives of Fergus Sutter (the first recognised professional football player) and Arthur Kinnaird (11th Lord Kinnaird) who was president of the FA from 1890 until his death in 1923.
Whilst I’d say both script and dialogue are the weakest thing about this (not unusual for a series penned by Fellowes) the acting – particularly from Kevin Guthrie who plays Fergus Sutter and James Harkness who plays his friend and teammate Jimmy Love – is utterly compelling. Their camaraderie is wonderful. It is their story which captivates, both on and off the football field, as they battle social injustice in this timeless story of class struggle.
…It is their story which captivates, both on and off the football field.
Julian Fellowes made his name as a writer with the Robert Altman film Gosford Park (for which he won an Oscar) but he is best known for his exploration of life – both upstairs and downstairs – in an English stately home aka Downton Abbey. Thus it’s accurate to say he’s long been interested in the lives of the English aristocracy and, interested in the lives of those who lived cheek by jowl – yet separate from them.
Against the backdrop of industry the same men who toil in factories, in the industrial North, strive for their moment of glory on the football pitch in The English Game; with football history reworked so that more than one football season is compressed into a series of matches. In reality Fergus Suter moved south of the Scottish border to play for the Lancashire Darwen football team in 1878 and appeared in four FA Cup finals from 1882 to 1886, collecting winner’s medals in the three consecutive years from 1884 to 1886. He wasn’t in Blackburn-Olympic, the first working class team to hold the cup aloft in 1882. But the dramatic retelling which rewrites the past here holds true to the spirit of the game and the legacy of the players.
Against the Lancashire teams, on the side of the Old Etonions, Edward Holcroft plays Arthur Kinnaird and ably captures both the man’s love of the game and his decency. That said, Holcroft’s portrayal gains much from what his character isn’t, when seen in contrast to the fantastic performances given by Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Alfred Lyttleton and Daniel Ings as Francis Marindin. The latter two are portrayed as classist, biased boors; with Lloyd-Hughes revealing himself to be a phenomenal physical actor who encapsulates the affectations of the upper class, nudging the line between acting and caricature, just as he did in Channel 4’s Indian Summers. He is more polished, amusing and arresting here. But both actors ably support Holcroft, with Ings wonderfully capturing the resentment the team feels when they’re usurped in a game they invented.
Despite the social commentary woven throughout these six episodes, this drama is soap bubble light. Enriched by its portrayals of friendship, and by more than one romantic subplot, it is watchable, easy going and oddly memorable – for all that the dialogue is anything but authentic to the period. But, I admit, the inauthenticity did grate.
The worst culprit in demeanour, tone and delivery was Arthur Kinnaid’s wife, Mary Alma Victoria, played by Charlotte Hope. Her mannerisms are wholly and completely modern – for all her corseted waist, exquisite costumes and coiffures. Her character’s drama (the loss of a child and the emotional toll it takes both on her and her marriage) drives a large part of the human interest side of this story, so she has ample screen-time. And whilst the loss itself is tragic, I found it odd that this was presented as if the baby was the couple’s only chance of conceiving.
A brief look at Lord Kinnaird’s biography reveals a family of seven children, both sons and daughters, born in fairly rapid succession as was usual for the period. Whilst he and his wife did lose a two month old son (in autumn of 1883), they also lost a daughter, in 1886, who died at the age of nine. Here the writers seem to have conflated the loss of these two children into one, longed-for, son and in so doing distort the reality of life in Victorian England, where large families were not uncommon – even amongst the upper classes. Mary’s loss, and her inability to come to terms with it, drives her philanthropic endeavours in The English Game. Yet, typically for drama made today, any sense of Christian charity which would undoubtedly have informed Mary Alma’s role as a society wife is absent from her characterisation.
Instead Mary stands as a beacon of acceptance and modernity, against her father-in law’s strictures, when she champions her husband’s love of football which his father (played by Anthony Andrews) sees as a hobby which his son should have outgrown. More pertinently, in championing those more unfortunate than herself she mirrors her husband’s actions on and off the football field. Yet, I found Charlotte Hope’s performance gauche and lacking in all the charm which Edward Holcroft exhibits. Amusingly I also found the two had little chemistry. In contrast Harry Michell and Mary Higgins, who play the couples friends Monkey Hornby and his wife Ada, are beautifully cast and utterly believable as a happily married couple. They mirror the love story which plays out between Jimmy Love and his landlady Doris, played by Kerrie Hayes, which is a thing of joy throughout.
Love interests aside, the main relationships celebrated here are the friendships forged in sweat, in mud and on grass. Friendships which sustain men – and entire communities – as they dream an impossible dream – to raise the FA cup as winners, and to win out over the public school boys whose lives are as gilded as their sports trophies.
If you’ve scrolled right past The English Game thinking –Oh football, not for me – reconsider. I know almost nothing about the game, and less about the history of the game. Yet, I really enjoyed this. It’s a wonderful tale of sportsmanship and brotherhood, of hardship, toil, muddy grass and a leather ball expertly guided up a pitch towards a goal. Julian Fellowes, and his team of writers, celebrate the grit, drive, talent, and ambition of these early football players and in so doing foreshadow our modern era.
Today football has come home from the muddy pitches of the mid 1880s to giant stadiums where star players are now worshipped like gods. The aristocracy, who once fleeting ruled the beautiful game, have been surpassed and supplanted by a meritocracy.
Watch The English Game and see where it all kicked off.