Robbie Williams, Netflix, review: It’s hard not to feel the star has been exploited

Netflix will not rest until it’s dredged up all the trauma and misery that comes with being famous in the raucous 90s and noughties. In the past couple of years, Pamela Anderson, David Beckham and Prince Harry have all sat down in comfy armchairs under morose mood lighting to list their wounds caused by being in the public eye.

Now it’s the turn of Robbie Williams – pop wunderkind turned struggling drug addict, who recently resurrected his career with a best of album and retrospective worldwide tour. Robbie Williams (the rather uninspired title of the Netflix doc), then, is part of this return from the dead.

The four-part series takes on a strange format, with Williams, now 49, settling down in bed wearing a black vest, black underpants and an array of necklaces to rake over his past. There are no other interviews or talking heads throughout the series (aside from a few snippets of insight from Williams’s wife of 13 years, Ayda Field, in the final episode), giving the films an intimate feel yet also curiously limited scope.

And despite there being four episodes, Robbie Williams can at times feel like a whistle-stop tour through the pop star’s struggles. Within half an hour of the opener, Williams has already left Take That and embarked on his incredibly successful (until it wasn’t – the derision-inducing “Rudebox” years are meticulously combed through) solo career.

We fly through the making of his first eight albums, briefly congratulate his 1998 Glastonbury performance and touch on his high-profile relationships with All Saints singer Nicole Appleton and Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.

One thing the documentary excels at is making the old Williams look cool. In hindsight, his music –particularly his songwriting alongside producer Guy Chambers – deserved more credit than it got at the time. In keeping a video diary for most of his life, Williams has managed to eulogise himself into a swaggering, funny, Oasis-inspired pop legend.

But there’s a constant undercurrent of sadness and dread throughout each era of Williams’s life, as almost every high point (and, for that matter, every low point) is punctuated with his addiction to both prescription and illegal drugs. At his lowest moment – circa 2006, post-Rudebox flop and around the time he met his wife – Williams was taking a deadly concoction almost daily and thought it would be best if he “passed away”. He credits Field (and his eventual reunion with his Take That bandmates) for saving his life.

It’s an ultimately joyless tale. Williams has said he hopes the viewing experience is as traumatic as the filming was for him – and I certainly didn’t come out of the other side of the four episodes feeling very hopeful. Despite the idyllic images of him hanging out with his children at his LA mansion and the distance he seems to have achieved from his darkest moments, an air of melancholy still looms around the star.

It begs the question: why make this documentary? Williams may have been hoping the process would have been cathartic, though he could have achieved the same effect without cameras capturing his reactions. Certain moments – specifically a 2006 concert in Leeds, during which he had an on-stage panic attack – still seem to trigger him, making for an uncomfortable watch.

Has Netflix exploited a troubled celebrity for views and subscribers? It’s hard not to come to such a conclusion, especially since the ending – in which a present day Williams leaves his crying children to go on tour, the very thing that broke him in the first place – feels so quietly devastating.

But it’s also impossible to ignore the potential good staring the past in the face might have done for Williams. If he found the experience healing, that’s good enough for me.