Gazza documentary review | Paul Gascoigne doc is a gripping tale about football legend

Gazza is not the documentary you expect from Paul Gascoigne, though this two-part BBC dive into the maverick superstar’s life away from the field is a compelling watch.

This is a documentary for everyone, it transcends sport in the way the Geordie enigma became a brand for everyone as he dominated the back and front pages of tabloids across the land.

It’s not a tired, formulaic re-run of his greatest hits featuring inevitable talking heads wearily trotting out the same lines about ‘that goal against Scotland’ while only sweeping the surface of Gascoigne’s indiscretions. Gazza is not that at all.

The focus here is not on Gascoigne’s extraordinary technical wizardry but on the “dark arts” practised around him by members on every level of the Fleet Street food chain, from convicted, underworld-dwelling phone-hackers up to the top brass, Rebekah Brooks (née Wade) and Piers Morgan, in particular. Brooks was cleared of phone-hacking charges in 2014 and Morgan has always strongly denied any involvement in it.

This is a historical piece, crafted almost entirely using archive footage, seasoned with dated and contemporary audio snippets. You are firmly transported back to a period in time when Umbro ruled the world and the pre-internet ’90s culture that feels so breathtakingly different from the world around us now. It’s a strife-filled tale executed brilliantly by the producers.

Part One hurriedly flicks through Gascoigne’s Newcastle breakthrough period and subsequent move to Tottenham. We see all the hallmarks of the boyish charm that went on to sweep the nation off its feet.

Gascoigne displays the permanent twinkle of a child being told off by a parent while still trying to make everyone in the room laugh. He is a performer, with a deep craving for adulation and affection that fuels his wonderful early career.

However, Gascoigne’s life and career show signs of creaking, coming away at the seams. Part Two is a stand-out triumph – the story of how a rough diamond was formed in a searing pressure-cooker environment.

The majority of voiceovers provided for the documentary don’t come from an all-star team of ex-England internationals, but from reporters and journalists, some of whom were convicted for phone hacking, including former News of the World journalist Greg Miskiw.

It’s a bold move, to give such a sinister supporting cast air time, but it pays off. They regale their accounts of surveilling Gascoigne and his then-wife Sheryl.

Brooks (then Wade) and Morgan both declined to be involved in the making of the documentary but they are woven throughout it. Brooks appears intermittently, a spectral figure drifting in the shadows drawn by paparazzi bulbs. She cuts a particularly ominous figure in Gazza as her ascent to the top of the career ladder is set against the tabloids’ ever-deepening, ever-lurking presence in the lives of the Gascoignes.

Much of the narrative in Part Two actually sidelines Gascoigne himself. His life is simply the prize in an escalating game of Capture The Flag between The Sun and The Mirror under the command of Brooks and Morgan.

Gazza – over which Gascoigne himself had zero creative control – is no mere hero-worshipping sympathy piece, but a case study into the human damage that can be caused by a media system rigged to benefit from falling stars.

The documentary does not shy away from his admissions of domestic abuse against Sheryl while the correlation between his rise to stardom and descent into alcoholism is laid bare, but the scope is much wider. The documentary asks questions of its viewers about the type of content we willingly consume and the true cost for those it consumes.

Gazza is not the comfortable highlights reel you expect. That’s why it should be seen.

Gazza begins on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on Wednesday 13th April at 9pm.