Being in the midst of a sports reality show really isn’t what you’d expect it to be. But then again, “Welcome to Wrexham” isn’t like any other sports reality show, so I shouldn’t be too surprised by how things turned out.
I assumed it would be an experience marked by intrusive camera crews recording our mundanity, which a melodramatic editing process would twist until everybody on the show was an embarrassing meme. Instead, it must be said that the camera crews are positively lovely, accepted within both the club and the town as friends, not an unfortunate necessity.
Rather than create shock value, the show is remarkably good at selecting people and themes. It reflects what I experience, both as a fan of the club and a resident of Wrexham. To illustrate this, consider the one moment in all five seasons which I felt was inauthentic. It came early on, when Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds’ representative, Humphrey Ker, endured a disastrous introduction to the players and manager, Dean Keates.
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Everything that could go wrong did, leaving his skeptical audience bemused. I assumed the scene was fake. How could such a moment be handled so unbelievably badly?
I’ve now learned, on the authority of a number of people who were in that room, that it was not staged at all! Every cringingly awful moment that is portrayed on screen was real. Horribly, horribly real.
This just goes to show that the program isn’t interested in imposing something artificial on a small town in North Wales which, until the takeover of its football club, was suffering badly.
When the news of a reality show being filmed about the club broke, I was also edgy because we’re used to be patronized in Wrexham.
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have taken their roles seriously ever since buying the club -Credit:GETTYPart of this is because we’re Welsh. Our culture tends to be trivialized by mainstream English media. We are portrayed as peculiar people on the fringes of the British Isles who speak a funny language which sounds like you’re clearing your throat, living in quaint little villages with incredibly long names which contain no vowels.
I’m not saying there isn’t a grain of truth in these stereotypes. A couple of miles outside Wrexham is a village called Rhosllanerchrugog. That really is its name: my cat didn’t just walk across the keyboard.
Across the border we are reduced to these supposed idiosyncrasies. Watch any quiz show featuring a Welsh contestant and you’ll see what I mean.
They might be up against someone from London, who will give us a detailed picture of where they come from. If they win a fancy new TV, they've given the entire nation step-by-step directions to where they can find it!
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Then we turn to the poor old Welsh contestant. Let’s call her Lleucu, because it’s an obscure name I struggle to get even my tongue around, weathered and contorted like Richard III’s spine as it is by a lifetime of Gaelic pronunciation.
“So, who are you and where do you come from?” the host inquires, careful not to attempt her name.
“My name’s Lleucu, and I’m from Wales.”
Wales. Not Hounslow. Not Harrow. Not three doors down on the King’s Road in Chelsea. Wales. As if it’s just one tiny village where everyone knows each other and we all wave gaily as Jones The Bread cycles past, delivering loaves from his bakery to our hovels. Not a nation of 8,000 square miles and over 3 million people. We are, essentially, Connecticut.
Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have been proud to put Wales and the Welsh flag on full display since they arrived -Credit:GETTYAt some point in the show, Lleucu will also be asked to confirm that the Welsh word for a microwave oven is “Popty-ping”. She will have no option but to say yes because, I’m afraid, it’s true. Sometimes, we don’t help ourselves.
So what would “Welcome to Wrexham” do to us? We would surely look even more peculiar to a North American audience, wouldn’t we? Well, no, because the show has flown the Welsh flag proudly. In contrast to British media, it has never mocked Welsh culture; quite the opposite.
Wrexham AFC’s owners have both learned Welsh phrases and my wife, a first language Welsh speaker who is quick to sniff out artificiality, confirms that Rob’s Welsh is rather good.
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We’re now inundated with tourists from around the world, who all speak so highly of the places and people they meet. It’s uplifting. They always ask if how “Welcome to Wrexham” portrays the town is authentic, and if we really have been on a journey which has rendered us unrecognisable from the depression of the post-COVID years.
The answer is a resounding yes. It’s down to the generosity of those visitors, and the fact that “Welcome to Wrexham”, as it turns out, isn’t just unlike any other sports reality show. It’s not a sports reality show at all.
It’s about community, and has attracted the sort of good people who like to see others thrive. The football doesn’t matter: as former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said, it’s the most important of the unimportant things.
“Welcome to Wrexham”’s recognition of this is why it’s a phenomenon.
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