‘Sunderland Til I Die’ Is The ‘Gimme Shelter’ Of Sports Docuseries (Minus The Stabbing)

You don’t need to be a soccer fan — or even a sports fan — to appreciate Sunderland ‘Til I Die. You only need to know what it’s like to have no control over the fate of something you love.

The eight-part documentary miniseries, released on Netflix in December, follows English association football club Sunderland AFC through the 2017-18 season – their first since being demoted from the top-flight English Premier League to the second-tier Football Championship. It’s a massive step down in prestige for the club after having spent ten straight years – and 15 of the last 18 – playing in arguably the world’s most popular sports league. If they perform well enough at the second tier, though, they can earn their way back among the blue-bloods of Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal.

That’s where we pick things up. A club with a long history, mildly humbled, but optimistic about turning things around quickly and returning to a place they — and their loyal supporters — believe that they rightly belong. We’re introduced to a deep cast of characters: the players, the genial and possibly overmatched first-year manager, the trainers, equipment managers, chefs and administrative staff who keep the club running — and of course, the fans.

We meet everyday people from this city in England’s industrial northeast, once known as “The Largest Shipbuilding Town In The World”. These are people whose weekends, identities, and emotional world are inexorably tied to a club they love dearly — one that hasn’t done much to return the favor in recent years. For American football fans, the Cleveland Browns are a striking parallel. (I say this as a lifelong and regret-filled fan of that team; I felt their struggle personally.)

At the same time, we meet club CEO Martin Bain. He informs us, in a telling moment early on, that the club has overspent its revenues in recent years and plans to tighten their budget going forward. Given their situation, it’s concerning. A club one strong season away from returning to the Premier League and its massive revenues can ill afford to adopt an austerity program at such a moment — lest they condemn themselves to a spiral of losses, shrinking fan interest and further diminished resources. That’s exactly what Bain – a British Christopher Meloni look-alike in expensive tailored shirts – intends to do, though.

I’ll caution you with a mild spoiler alert right now – if you don’t want to know how Sunderland’s season goes, you should watch the whole thing right now and come back. (I’ll wait).

With that out of the way, I’ll say – there’s a perverse and fascinating spectacle in watching a documentary realize that it’s not about what the filmmakers thought it was when they started. Films like The Queen of Versailles, which profiled a rich developer building a mega-mansion on the eve of the late-aughts financial crisis; Gimme Shelter, which was to be the Rolling Stones’ Woodstock as they played the ultimately ill-fated Altamont Festival; or even (on a much more horrifying scale) the film about a rookie firefighter that a pair of French filmmakers were shooting one September morning that turned into 2002’s 9/11.

Sometimes, you start making a movie about one thing, and something entirely different happens.

When Sunderland takes the pitch for their first game of the season, it’s meant to be the story of a proud club battling back from temporary adversity. By midseason, it’s a horror story. The team loses their first game, and keeps losing. Thoughts of winning their division and returning to the Premier League for the next season are quickly recalibrated into hopes that the team can just avoid an utterly disastrous second straight relegation, this time to the (somewhat confusingly-named) third-tier League One.

Breaths are bated that the course can be corrected before it’s too late – fans expect better players to be brought in during the limited windows for such transfers, but only Bain knows that he won’t be spending the money needed to do so. The manager is sacked midseason, and his replacement brings brief hope but ultimately little change of direction. The team just barely avoids going an entire calendar year without a win. The losses pile up, and further relegation looms. It becomes a chronicle of a catastrophe.

Sunderland ‘Til I Die is deeply relatable if you’ve ever worked hard for a company that’s failed over your head, if you’ve ever tried to help someone who can’t help themself, if you’ve ever kept hope in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ownership’s mismanagement is the plot of this story; the fans are the lifeblood of it. They’re red-faced and cursing in the stands at one moment, crying softly over in front of their television in another, suffering in vain as their beloved club’s fortunes plummet. They’re putting everything they’ve got into this, and the club is failing them.

So what’s there to do when that comes to its logical end? Curse the clueless bastards in suits. Drown your sorrows at the pub. Hope that new ownership brings a different result. Then? Head back in and do it all over again. As one woman says while waiting in a long line to renew season tickets, in the surprisingly triumphant and uplifting finale:

“I wouldn’t not go to the match. I’ve been going all this time.”

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Stream Sunderland Til I Die on Netflix