Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Robbie Williams’ on Netflix, An Autobiographical Docuseries With The Superstar English Singer In A Meditative Mood  

Robbie Williams (Netflix) is a four-part limited series directed by Joe Pearlman (Louis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now) that finds the English singer-songwriter in a very reflective place. Now 49, he’s presented with thousands of hours of footage, much of which he’s never seen, that tracks his career all the way back to the beginning, when a 16-year-old Williams was the youngest member of British boy band sensation Take That. Massive success, the addictions that followed, the start of a solo career, Williams’ at times testy relationship with the press, and shots at redemption as he finds perspective on public life and solace as a husband and father – Robbie Williams the docuseries plots it all on a map as Robbie Williams the man watches the footage unfold.      

ROBBIE WILLIAMS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: It’s nighttime as Williams pads about his well-appointed Beverly Hills mansion. “When it comes to sleep,” he says in voiceover, “my body goes ‘We’re not!’ Four hours of tossing and turning and dealing with an amorphous blob of stuff.”

The Gist: Williams’ mind isn’t the only thing turning over those clumps of rich soil and memory. In the present, the singer relaxes in his bare essentials as he’s presented with a laptop on which flickers various gobs of his past self. “I left school at 16 with no qualifications whatsoever,” he says, “and joined a boy band.” Take That, a five-piece based on the New Kids on the Block model that prominently featured a young singer and songwriter named Gary Barlow, found near immediate success upon their 1990 formation. A very teenaged Williams is seen mugging his way through interviews, charming and pugnacious all at once, and a supercut highlights how Take That went from singing and dancing hopefuls to nationwide “bigger than the Beatles” stardom nearly overnight. “Fucking ‘ell,” the current Williams marvels. He was just a baby enjoying the ride, “dunking into the grownup world that I wasn’t ready for.” 

Williams turned to coke, booze, and MDMA as a coping mechanism, watched jealousies deteriorate his relationship with Barlow, and by 1995 he was offered a choice: clean up or depart Take That. He chose the latter, and then Robbie Williams goes into the “Let’s Get Wrecked” mode of the lead episode’s title. Partying with Oasis, stumbling through interviews, and faltering as Williams tries to get a solo career off the ground. “You don’t want to be a has-been at 23,” he says in the present as the camera catches him and his children strolling his mansion’s landscaped grounds. “I needed somebody to help me with the thoughts and melodies in my head.” Enter musician and producer Guy Chambers, and eventual solo success with the smash 1997 single “Angels.”   

But Williams also entered rehab, and continued to deal with insecurities over his evolving role as an entertainer. While Robbie Williams is packed with archival footage from writing and recording sessions, live shows, and bits of ephemera from his very public life, it’s the dynamic between his past and current selves that gives the series its backbone. Williams doesn’t shy from anything, always retains his charm, and invites the audience to deal with all of that amorphous stuff right along with him from the comfort of a California king bed.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Paramount+ recently announced that it will continue its run of mining the MTV archives for documentary material, this time focusing on NKOTB, Backstreet Boys and the rest of America’s boy band set from the 1990s. And the doc Louis Tomlison: All of Those Voices observes the ex-One Direction singer as he confronts a dilemma similar to young Robbie Williams: What does a solo career look and sound like when your identity as a performer was wrapped up in a boy band?  

Our Take: Who among us hasn’t marveled at our past selves when presented with the video evidence? Robbie Williams is at its best when the singer and songwriter takes on the role of his own life’s narrator. It’s normal for a documentary-style profile to compile pieces of old footage and string it all together with context from contemporary voices. But this one eschews any outside observers, former band members, or even commentary from its subject’s loved ones. Instead, it lets Williams handle the observing and contextualizing personally as he observes the archival material play out. Here he is filling in his thought process in the present as his baby-faced self cracks jokes and gets hysterical in the past, and often he describes those thoughts as a chaotic cloud of nervousness, social anxiety, and the insidious reach of clinical depression. It’s revealing stuff, and endearing, as it combines Williams’ natural charisma with contemplation and stark resolutions. “I was 16 when I joined Take That,” he says as video plays of the Jamaica-based writing sessions for I’ve Been Expecting You in 1998. “And I guess that there is some sort of broken teenager in there that will be tryin’ to sort out the wreckage of the past.” With Robbie Williams, the superstar gets a chance to sort it out in constructed real time. The result is a totally unvarnished meta meditation on his journey. And from the euphoria of instant stardom to all of the adversity, hits and misses that came after, it becomes much more of a personal document than just another celebrity documentary.  

Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond various stages of shirtlessness.

Parting Shot: As Williams is seen backstage at Glastonbury in 1998, anticipating his biggest gig ever along with 88,000 gathered fans, he remembers how terrified he was in that moment. “I didn’t know what was gonna ‘appen. It’s the epoch of credibility. There’s still a bit of me goin’ ‘I’m still Rob from Stoke-on-Trent.’ That’s one of those moments where I think I’m gonna be found out.”

Sleeper Star: The title of Robbie Williams is no joke – whether it’s his past or current self, he’s basically the only one in it. But in the first episode Williams does receive a cuddly visit from his oldest daughter Theodora (“Teddy-bear”). Watching a tape of her dad in the Take That days, she cuts to the quick of the drama. “Question: who did you hate the most, and why?”    

Most Pilot-y Line: “I think this is the most difficult bit to watch,” current day Robbie Williams says as footage plays on a laptop of 1997 and younger self self careening through recording sessions and public appearances where he was obviously fucked up. “Everybody knows I’m in trouble. But um…I didn’t care. I’d gone past the point of no return. And, I needed grownups. My life had spiraled out of control so severely. But my manager understood what needed to happen. I needed to be carted off and taken away to rehab.

“It’s a tough watch, reliving that again.”  

Our Call: STREAM IT. For any superfans clamoring for more access, Robbie Williams has you covered, as the superstar singer muses and reflects on the person he sees in voluminous footage from his very public past.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.