I would argue that the thing most people seem to have found off-putting about the new Tom Brady documentary - that also features Birmingham City - is actually the best thing about it.
Perhaps it's a matter of expectation. Any production about US ownership in English football will inevitably draw comparisons with 'Welcome to Wrexham', the ongoing chronicle of actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds' investment in the formerly struggling Welsh club and their subsequent rise through the English leagues.
As you would expect with two Hollywood stars at the helm, there's a very deliberate setting of narrative and tone. The premise could very easily have stoked overwhelming backlash, but there is emphasis on making the story as much about the long-suffering people of Wrexham who just want to see their club not be a complete and utter shambles. Insight into their lives is interwoven with the progress of the team, and, of course, the new owners navigating what for them is a completely alien environment.
It feels genuine, for the most part. Reynolds and McElhenney display a level of self-awareness you perhaps would not expect, interactions with fans are not particularly awkward or forced, and they make a point of staying in their lane. Namely, not interfering in football matters.
From that perspective, 'Built in Birmingham: Brady and the Blues', which follows the former NFL superstar's own foray into English football, is the anti-Wrexham.
You've had the self-deprecating, 'we're not sure how we got here' stuff from the amiable Rob and Ryan, now here's one of the most decorated American athletes in history launching into foul-mouthed tirades about Peterborough United.
This is pretty hilarious encapsulated by McElhenney himself cameoing in one episode, in which he's asked to impart a message or some words of wisdom to his countryman in his new role. He quickly and politely declines on the basis he would never dare offer sporting advice to Tom Brady.
Shortly after, the same prompt is put to Brady, who immediately barks: 'We're f*****g coming for you'.
.@TomBrady with lesson #1 to being a blue. 🔵 Built In Birmingham: Brady & The Blues premieres August 1 on @PrimeVideo. pic.twitter.com/jHPsvMdbNr
— Birmingham City FC (@BCFC) July 18, 2025
It’s hard to tell if this tone is entirely deliberate, but mixing American sports bravado with a club steeped in self-loathing makes for a uniquely awkward — and fascinating — dynamic. Brady, who acquired a 3% stake in Birmingham in 2023, is listed as executive producer alongside owner Tom Wagner, so presumably had some editorial input. But it's clear from the very beginning that there will be absolutely no attempt to put a cuddly filter on him.
From frequent scenes inside his private jet, to visible discomfort at the prospect of meeting ordinary supporters in a pub, a man of the people Brady is not. He speaks mostly in motivational slogans, as though every interaction with another person is a pre-match team talk. There are vanishingly few instances in which he holds a flowing conversation with anyone other than Wagner.
But Brady is so obviously not wired like most other people, and that's hardly a surprise.
A seven-time Super Bowl winner in the NFL, he is widely regarded as the sport's greatest-ever player. His success was derived as much from iron-clad mentality, intelligence, and an extreme dedication as it was from natural ability. Brady himself admits at the start of the documentary that he wasn't the most talented up-and-comer in the US college system, and was well down the New England Patriots' pecking order when first drafted into the NFL.
But he is undoubtedly a born winner, and the idea of watching this incredibly intense individual bulldoze his way around a failing English football club is, frankly, a very good one. It largely makes for compelling viewing, even if it's difficult to shake the feeling that the wheels could easily come off at some point down the line.
As well as being the face of the ownership, his role positions him as a kind of leadership consultant. In one of several Brady speeches to the Birmingham players, ex-Rangers and Aberdeen winger Scott Wright is unaware he's already been earmarked for a future segment with Si Ferry on Open Goal, as he's compelled to 'kick some ass' before a League One game against Reading.
Brady himself is unfiltered, but the documentary somewhat glosses over Birmingham's disastrous appointment of Wayne Rooney as manager at the expense of an overachieving John Eustace, one that catalysed relegation to the third-tier. The lead promotional clip that accompanied its release was one of Brady questioning Rooney's work ethic, but the former Manchester United and England striker only features in one episode.
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Rooney appears as though he simply does not know how to talk to Brady. There's an excruciating moment where Brady, trying to make a point about the team's mentality, animatedly describes how he would treat every training session like the Super Bowl, to which Rooney then mumbles - 'yeah, nah, they're a good bunch of lads, to be fair'.
There are scenes in which Brady and Wagner are at pains to 'front up' to Rooney's appointment, but despite their success in replacing him with ex-Celtic assistant Chris Davies and romping to the League One title, it remains the biggest red flag about their ownership.
Davies is undoubtedly a talented coach, and his hiring suggests the Birmingham regime learned from an ill-fated attempt to simply bring in a big name. It's as though they simply asked who was the most high profile ex-player who was also attainable as a manager, while declining to look at Rooney's actual record in the dugout.
They also spent upwards of £30m to get out of the third tier, and while this is acknowledged throughout, that financial advantage won't exist in the Championship. Can they sustain success on a more level playing field? The solitary shambolic season under Wagner's ownership in the Championship means there are doubts, as they've already shown a propensity to make rash decisions.
Davies this week dismissed any suggestion that Brady's role - amusingly described as 'a general' by Wagner - is overbearing for him, instead positing that he is a valuable sounding board with fresh perspectives. As we've established, Brady seems to have little Reynolds and McElhenny style interest in the wider Birmingham community.
He is, however, utterly obsessed with winning. There is no question he knows how to create a successful environment, and Birmingham's mentality badly needed a reset following decades of underachievement for a club in the UK's second-largest city.
If you can get past the absurdity of Brady shouting 'let's f*****g go, baby' at 32-year-old former Hythe Town, Doncaster and Cheltenham striker Alfie May, then it's hard to deny the whole thing is pretty fascinating.
How much of what drove Brady to unprecedented glory is transferable from the NFL to the EFL? What works and what doesn't? Can these two very different sporting cultures really be brought together long-term?
The documentary flirts with these ideas without fully realising them, and for every insightful moment we get shots of Brady doing pull-ups or being chauffeured around with an entourage who display a thinly-veiled contempt for his new venture.
Regardless, Birmingham's return to one of the sport's most competitive divisions will likely answer the questions this fly-on-the-wall couldn't.
