Fever Pitch! The Rise of the Premier League

Seriously, Who made this? I'm sure United fans going to love it, as it's not that bad. But to call it a story about the Premier League is just a blatant lie. It's ONLY about United! The few times other teams are mentioned it's just to tell how they played against and rivaled United.

This was disappointing. I have to assume the filmmakers intended a Man U documentary, but marketing people decided to bill it as "the Rise of the Premier League." Aside from the bulk of the first episode, which is a decent account of the formation of the PL, everything revolves around Man U, and if you like Man U and came for a Man U documentary, I suppose it's okay, but if you want a true documentary about the rise of the Premier League, it is completely lacking in scope.

A better documentary about the Premier League could have been done if they had followed multiple teams, because there was far more to these early years than Man U, or even other top teams. There were teams whose fortunes declined. It would have been an interesting contrast. But it's a Man U fishbowl, and not worth the time of anyone whose interest goes beyond one football team.

Thus was a nice documentary series about the rise of the Premier League, with lots of key people speaking along the way.

It is quite Man U heavy though.

This documentary series views the history of the Premier League totally through the prism of Manchester United.... The first episode is interesting because it gives good insight on Sky and what they were trying to achieve... by episode 2 it's become a pretty dull account of Man Utd's exploits. It's laughable that teams like Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool are barely even mentioned in the first 3 programmes. What's even worse is there's NO coverage of what the Premier League meant for the leagues below or for the smaller teams who had to compete against the economic giants.... where are Ipswich, Norwich, Coventry, QPR, Aston Villa, Wimbledon, Crystal Palace etc etc.

The series is totally unbalanced and a poor effort at telling the story of an era where football changed utterly. Pretty frustrating that they've made such a hash of it.

This series chronicles Manchester United's resurgence from 1993 to their treble win in 1999. This coincides with the breakaway, more commercialised Premier League, which combined with Sky TV and other monopolies, for better or worse, to begin a new era in 1992.

If you're a football fan you'll notice from the cast list that it's very Man U-heavy. If you're a Man U fan I might recommend it for a rainy day, especially if you remember the period in question - you probably won't learn anything new but the nostalgia's definitely there.

There are ocassional shards of interviews with players and others who were not connected to Man U. If you're not a fan of the club or prefer to watch quality, this is a fairly poor, one-sided and one-dimensional series. I've not researched but can only conclude that it's a Manchester United™ product.