I grew up in the 'Take that' and the 'Robbie Williams' era and although not their biggest fans I secretly admit to having enjoyed most of the music they dished out. And I have always had a passing interest in Robbie's life, not being able to understand why he seems so troubled.
And the problem with this series is I haven't learned anything new about him. He suffers from depression and he certainly wants us to remember that in this series Money and fame are not the cure to this, at least for Robbie. Having the normality of a family does not seem to have helped him to heal him either.
I don't want to be too hard on him for the above reasons, but he has released this series, and just like he is a musician, I am somebody who has spent 20 years writing honest reviews on here.
The series I'd basically Robbie looking back through his career. For starters, he could have done this in an office somewhere, dressed in appropriate clothing, but no. The whole series was with him sat on his bed in his underwear. Now, I'm a man so don't have a woman's perspective, but it's not a good look. It's a deliberately pretentious way of him 'showing himself off', as he would see it, and maybe it might have worked 30 years ago. But talk about growing old disgracefully.
And the rest of the series is basically old unseen footage of Robbie being miserable about how he has been treated by the press, him being full of nerves before his concert and how he us both comfortable in the UK. In many ways the same type of character as Prince Harry. The main difference is that Harry has had little control in his life until recently whereas Robbie has made all his own choices.
At the end we do get a bit of respite with him talking for all of 2 minutes that his life now is so much better as he now has his wife and four kids. But I don't think that's why he did this documentary. I don't even think he did it for his fans whom he doesn't seem at all grateful for. I doubt he even needed the money. What he did need was to feed his ego, to get us all to understand how hard he had it. The main problem is that it is hard to understand somebody who is unhappy at having the type of life that to many would seem the dream.
Depression is very real and destroys lives. I don't want people thinking I don't understand that, I certainly do. But for so many years now, Robbie has had full autonomy of his life. He has the means for the best of help whilst others have no support whatsoever. Despite his recent happiness with his family and situation, he still has the need to continuously tell us how hard he has had it.
