Five things to watch this week

THE FINAL: ATTACK ON WEMBLEY — NETFLIX

The final of Euro 2020 was supposed to be a moment for England to unite behind their men’s football team for what could have been their first trophy victory since the country won the World Cup in 1966. Taking place at Wembley Stadium in July 2021 because of delays due to the Covid lockdowns and marking for many fans the first time that they had had the chance to leave their homes and let their hair down, the event instead revealed England football fandom in all its ugly, drunken, drug-addled, racist barbarism.

Tens of thousands of fans, many without tickets for the match, descended on the stadium precinct from the morning of the final, which was scheduled to kick off only at 8pm. Boozed up, drugged up and pumped up for what they believed would be a righteous victory over Italy, the English proceeded to offer a masterclass in the disgusting and often terrifying behaviour that’s given them a deserved reputation as some of the worst football fans in the world.

For hours before the match and with increasing threats to fans with tickets, stadium security guards and the police, who were called in to try to stop the situation from turning into a Hieronymus Bosch vision of hell, the English showed their true colours, genitals and boorish animalism. As this tense and deeply shameful documentary shows, what should have been a great day for the England team and the English nation became a disgraceful day for the country’s sport and its national character, probably only saved from ending in tragedy by the deflation that followed the Lions’ loss on penalties.

LET IT BE — DISNEY PLUS

Having already mined the out-takes and unused footage of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s footage of the recording sessions for The Beatles’ final album for his excellent 2021 docuseries Get Back, director Peter Jackson has now restored Lindsay-Hogg’s original film, criminally underseen for five decades, to its original glory.

Following the Fab Four in their end-of-days period and culminating with the legendary performance on the roof of Abbey Road Studios, it’s a heartwarming tribute to the niceness and mostly good-natured joshing nature of the four friends, who changed the course of the history of popular music before leaving it all behind for their own personal projects.

SHARDLAKE — DISNEY PLUS

CJ Sansom’s Tudor-era mystery books received suitably brooding on-screen treatment in this adaptation of the Shardlake series, in which Shardlake is sent on a mission by Henry VIII’s chief counsel, Thomas Cromwell (Sean Bean), to investigate a grisly murder in the remote town of Scarnsea. As Shardlake soon learns, things are not quite what they seem and the truth may lead him to places that neither he nor the powers that be will be happy with.

BEAU TRAVAIL — MUBI.COM

Claire Denis’ 1999 drama, a modern adaptation of the 19th-century story by Herman Melville, remains a master study in unspoken erotic tension with its tale of the jealous, obsessive and ultimately tragic desire of a bitter sergeant-major for a young recruit. Quietly surreal and beautiful, it’s a poetic, elliptical exploration of the performance, demands and fragility of masculinity.

BODKIN — NETFLIX

Will Forte leads the cast of this black comedy series about a group of annoying true crime podcasters who flock to a small Irish town looking to solve a murder but soon find that things are not quite as pleasant or picturesque as they appear.