Welcome to Wrexham

Welcome to Wrexham is an American sports documentary television series that premiered on August 24, 2022, on FX. The series documents the events of Welsh association football club Wrexham A.F.C., as told by the club's owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. The series received critical acclaim, winning two Critics' Choice Television Awards and five Primetime Emmy Awards. The second season premiered on September 12, 2023. In November 2023, the series was renewed for a third season, which premiered on May 2, 2024. In May 2024, the series was renewed for a fourth season.

Background
In September 2020, American actor Rob McElhenney and Canadian-American actor Ryan Reynolds announced their intention to buy Wrexham A.F.C., a Welsh professional association football club based in the Racecourse Ground in Wrexham, North East Wales in the United Kingdom. The company RR McReynolds was set up by November 2020, and the deal was completed in February 2021. As of the purchase, Wrexham A.F.C. played in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system, below the Premier League and the three tiers of the English Football League.

At the time, the team was described to be "struggling": Management before 2011 was described to have "mismanaged the club to the point of near collapse", with fans "starting to fall out of love with it". The club was served with a winding-up order in 2011. Following the suspension of the 2019–20 National League in March 2020 after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, Wrexham A.F.C. was said to have furloughed staff and players, and the club was experiencing a "threat to the[ir] continued existence". Prior to the pair's purchase, Wrexham A.F.C. was owned by the Wrexham Supporter's Trust, a fan-operated company, since 2011. The trust approved McElhenney and Reynolds' £2 million takeover by 98.6%. Following the purchase, Wrexham A.F.C.'s Twitter account posted a skit with McElhenney and Reynolds performing a parody advert for Ifor Williams Trailers, then the only sponsor for Wrexham A.F.C. McElhenney and Reynolds attended their first ever game since becoming the club's new owners at Maidenhead, a 3–2 defeat in October 2021.

The series is said to be inspired by Sunderland 'Til I Die, which prompted McElhenney to be interested in buying an association football club, as well as the influence of Humphrey Ker, who was also interested in purchasing a club. Ker was said to have been always watching association football in the writer's room of McElhenney's show Mythic Quest, causing McElhenney to become interested as well, particularly "the idea of promotion and demotion", which McElhenney said was "incredible to me". McElhenney also joked that he only had "TV money" and needed "superhero, movie star money". Ker described himself as "Rob and Ryan's representative" to the club as the pair's inside operations person. The inspiration for the documentary series came from McElhenney's viewing of Chef's Table, Last Chance U and Cheer, and his subsequent realization that all of those were produced by Boardwalk Pictures, who he approached to partner with.

Synopsis
The series is based on the Hollywood pair's attempts to revive the third-oldest professional association football team in the world, founded in 1864, and how the team has performed under the pair's ownership. The pair have no known experience in managing a sports team. The series would also highlight the pair's hopes in improving the team and bringing positive change to the local Wrexham community.

During and since the takeover, Wrexham has risen in the rankings of the National League. In the 2019–20 National League (prior to any talk of a takeover), Wrexham A.F.C. were 20th, and by the 2020–21 season, Wrexham rose to eighth place. In the 2021–22 season, the first full season under the new ownership, Wrexham finished in 2nd. However, despite a successful season, they missed out on promotion to the fourth-tier EFL League Two after being knocked-out in the semi-finals of the promotion play-off and remained in the fifth-tier National League for the 2022–23 season.

Cast
The cast for the series was stated as the following:
 * Rob McElhenney – Wrexham AFC co-owner, chairman and executive producer
 * Ryan Reynolds – Wrexham AFC co-owner, chairman and executive producer
 * Humphrey Ker – Wrexham AFC executive director and consulting producer
 * Fleur Robinson – Wrexham AFC chief executive
 * Shaun Harvey – Wrexham AFC advisor to the board
 * Phil Parkinson – Wrexham AFC manager
 * Paul Mullin – Wrexham AFC player
 * Jordan Davies – Wrexham AFC player
 * Aaron Hayden – Wrexham AFC player
 * Ollie Palmer – Wrexham AFC player

Development
The series is produced by Boardwalk Pictures, the company also behind Last Chance U and Chef's Table. Maximum Effort, a film company founded by Reynolds is also co-producing and marketing the series. FX commissioned the first two seasons of the show. McElhenney confirmed plans for a second season, following the full release of the first, on October 13, 2022. The executive producers of the series were stated to be Rob McElhenney, Ryan Reynolds, Nick Frenkel, John Henion, Andrew Fried, Dane Lillegard, George Dewey and Sarina Roma. Henion was also the showrunner for season 1, with Bryan Rowland and Josh Drisko running season 2.

Alex Webb of Bloomberg News estimated that the first season of the show would bring Reynolds and McElhenney a revenue of £600,000, which would have contributed considerably to the club's budget that year.

Filming
Filming for the docuseries began December 2020, with the film crew appearing alongside the owners' first visit to the team at the Wrexham v. Maidenhead United F.C. match in October 2021. In an interview with Variety, Reynolds admitted that he was initially uncomfortable with the all-access documentary setting. Discussions about dismissals of players were recorded on camera, but were ultimately cut, to keep focus on the effect of the decisions on the players, rather than on the executives making the decisions.

Post-production
For Season 1, sound recordings for the matches were done with single mono microphones, which were then mixed in post to sound wider and represent the larger crowds better; Season 2 featured full surround sound recordings. Editors found the first episode of the show challenging to plan, and ended up leaving most of the footage from the 2020–2021 season on the cutting room floor. The editors room had a mix of football fans and non-fans, which helped with balancing the match highlights with the human stories.

Season 1
The all-access "fly on the wall" docuseries was first announced by McElhenney and Reynolds on May 18, 2021. Later that month, an announcement trailer for the series was released onto Reynolds' YouTube channel, titled "Welcome to Wrexham". The roughly two-minute parody sketch comedy involves McElhenney and Reynolds announcing the docuseries, as well as former BBC News and S4C journalist Maxine Hughes, who acts as a "pretty disgruntled" Welsh language translator for the pair, but adds some "creative" translations to the pair's words.

In December 2021, FX released a video promo for the series, titled "It's Never Sunny in Wrexham". The short 30-second clip involved lookalikes of the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia cast, including a Danny DeVito lookalike, set inside the Turf Hotel located next to Wrexham A.F.C's Racecourse Ground. In the clip, the lookalike cast looks confusingly at a television screen showing the true cast of the American series starring McElhenney, staring back from their Philadelphia Irish bar. The clip also includes the two owners. The scenes involving the lookalike cast and the two owners were filmed in October 2021 as the two owners visited Wrexham. When the lookalike of Danny DeVito visited Wrexham, he was confused for the real actor. Describing the series, Nick Grad, FX Entertainment's original programming president said "Rob and Ryan will take fans inside the sport as never before, pairing their genuine love for the game with the welcome challenge of building on the heritage of this club".

On July 20, 2022, the official trailer for the program was released. The series' official synopsis read "From Hollywood to Wales, from the pitch to the locker room, the front office to the pub, Welcome to Wrexham will track Rob and Ryan's crash course in football club ownership and the inextricably connected fates of a team and a town counting on two actors to bring some serious hope and change to a community that could use it".

The Walt Disney Company, which owns FX as well as the sports network ESPN, moved three FA Cup matches involving Wrexham to networks ESPN2 and ESPNews to help promote the series.

Season 2
The first teaser trailer for the second season was aired during the half time of Wrexham's pre-season game against Chelsea on July 19, 2023. On July 22, it was officially announced that the season would begin airing on September 12.

Release
In May 2022, it was announced that the first two episodes of the series would premiere on August 24, 2022, in the US on FX. All episodes would become available on FX on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK on August 25, 2022. The series would be composed of 30-minute episodes. The series would also be released in Ireland on the same day and on Disney+ as the UK. Dates for other international releases have yet to be announced but are expected to be on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ (under the Star banner) in various other territories. It is set to be released as a Star Original outside the United States.

A week after the premiere of the first season's final episode, McElhenney and Reynolds confirmed on Twitter that a second season of the series is in the works. It was officially confirmed by Disney in April 2023 after Wrexham secured promotion to EFL League Two. The second season premiered on September 12, 2023, in the US, and the following day on Hulu and internationally on Disney+.

A third season of the show was announced on November 14, 2023. In a change, season 3 will air in the spring, rather than autumn as the first two seasons, to be closer to the contemporary events happening to the club.

Audience viewership
According to the streaming aggregator Reelgood, Welcome to Wrexham was the 7th most watched program across all platforms, during the week of September 2, 2022.

Critical response
For the first season, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 91% approval rating with an average rating of 7.2/10, based on 32 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Plunking two famous funnymen into the unpredictable journey of a sports documentary, Welcome to Wrexham is a calculated gamble that pays off." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 75 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

For the second season, Rotten Tomatoes reported a 90% approval rating with an average rating of 7.8/10, based on 21 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While its marquee stars are plenty welcoming all their own, Wrexham smartly spends its sophomore season focused on the community itself to inspiring effect." Metacritic assigned a score of 79 out of 100 based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

For the third season, Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 7.7/10, based on 6 critic reviews.

Spinoff Series
Necaxa’s backers purchased 5% of Wrexham AFC in April 2024 and its owners Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, in turn, purchased a minority stake in Necaxa.

On July 9th a TV series was ordered with filming beginning on the same day. The series will be similar to Welcome to Wrexham.