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‘Welcome to Wrexham’ Season 5 Is Not as Welcoming

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Foul-mouthed manager Phil Parkinson delivering each team talk as if he’s auditioning for the next Tarantino. Enough product placement to rival “The Truman Show.” Every single goal framed in more pain-staking slow motion than a “Baywatch” beach run.

The fifth season of “Welcome to Wrexham” still contains all the tropes which have helped turn the unglamorous machinations of lower league English football into the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. But now it has to cope with a new big baddie: the Great British Backlash which, after several years of bubbling under, has now exploded onto the surface. (And not because of co-owner Ryan Reynolds sycophantic way with emails.)

Over the last 12 months, Wrexham FC and its celebrity backers have felt the full force of the UK’s “build them up, knock them down” mentality, facing accusations of everything from manipulating the media to abusing public funding. The timeline of such issues means we’ll have to wait to see how, and if, they’re addressed. Nevertheless, the self-aggrandizing and self-congratulations on display in the first three episodes available for review implies humility may be in short supply.  

Indeed, it’s clear from the offset that “Welcome to Wrexham” is still determined to push the plucky little underdog narrative as they enter the second tier of the football pyramid for the first time since 1982. This despite the fact only two other Championship clubs forked out more in summer transfer signings (“The GDP of all of Canada,” Reynolds half-jokes) and their net spend was higher than Barcelona!  

“WELCOME TO WREXHAM” — “Joey Jones”— Season 5, Episode 2 (Airs Thursday, May 14th. Pictured: Arthur Okonkwo. CR: FXX
‘Welcome to Wrexham’

Before the opening credits have rolled, supporter journalist Bryn Law is insisting Wrexham’s back-to-back-to-back promotions is “arguably one of the greatest stories in the history of football” and that a fourth consecutive leap to the Premier League would go down as the greatest in sport, period (with the season ending last week, you don’t have to wait to find out whether this occurred).

Meanwhile, the first question posed to Rob McElhenney (now going by “Rob Mac”) immediately after is, “What do you do after you make history?” 

Reynolds, whose animated reactions to each development suggests he’s gunning for a revival of “Van Wilder,” doesn’t help matters, either. When Wrexham don’t get off to a dream start, losing their first two games against top-flight regulars by the narrowest of margins — hardly a disaster in such a notoriously difficult league — his dummy-spitting first reaction is, “So, we are going to need to spend some money!”  

It’s not the only glaring sense of entitlement. The sound of boos reverberating around the Racecourse Ground so early on — this for a club who were very recently languishing in mediocrity three divisions lower — further exemplifies why Wrexham have become the new love-to-hate. “Not much of a fairytale is it?,” one supporter moans after another result doesn’t go 100 percent their way as calls for the head of Parkinson start to gain momentum. Football fans are nothing if not overwhelmingly fickle.  

As well as struggling to contend with the club’s new pecking order on the field, “Welcome to Wrexham” occasionally appears to run out of content off it. There’s a touching update with Season 3’s documentary photographer now he’s shooting from inside rather than outside the stadium, yet its “Wrexham FC is religion” sentiment is football cliche 101.

There’s also a tenuous segment where executive director Humphrey Ker, also currently contributing to another highly enjoyable transatlantic crossover, “SNL UK,” finds it necessary to explain the concept of passing the ball. Then there’s McElhenney’s amiable dad, who gets several minutes to misinterpret football culture, his theory that fans don’t follow the badge but the humans who wear it, entirely contradicting the “Wrexham Till I Die” mindset the show constantly celebrates. 

“WELCOME TO WREXHAM” — “Joey Jones”— Season 5, Episode 2 (Airs Thursday, May 14th. Pictured: Racecourse stands. CR: FXX
‘Welcome to Wrexham’

Nowhere is that more apparent than this season’s first two human interest stories, always the show’s most involving aspect. In Episode 1, the recipient of a heart transplant meets the family of his donor, a young Wrexham obsessive who tragically lost his life in a car accident. While in Episode 2, Mickey Thomas — scorer of unarguably the club’s most famous goal — pays tribute to the recently departed Joey Jones, a fellow local hero who began and ended his career with the club.

Once again, the show refutes the old adage, “football isn’t a matter of life and death… it is much more important than that,” but without descending into schmaltz.  

“Welcome to Wrexham” also remains impressive in how it provides a wider context for those who don’t know their flat back fours from their false nines. A crash course in the recent checkered history of Sheffield Wednesday — another club promised the world by a new cash cow chairman — serves as both a cautionary tale and a testament to how Reynolds and McElhenney have continued to avoid the typical ownership villainy. 

Sure, “Welcome to Wrexham” still tries in vain to make us care as much about the spreadsheets as the results. Yet it’s clear that its leading men have developed a genuine lifelong emotional connection, not just to the club but to the local community, too. Five seasons in and the idea that Wrexham FC is simply a brand extension vanity project (looking at you, Tom Brady) has been well and truly put to bed.  

Of course, the pitfalls of rooting a soap opera in the world of modern football means your supporting characters are at the mercy of the transfer merry-go-round. Fan favorites Paul Mullin and Ollie Palmer are both given brief sendoffs (the former’s departure even makes Ker shed a tear). However, with seven other players leaving and no fewer than 14 coming in, this year’s cast feels it’s been reset in the style of a Ryan Murphy anthology.  

On first impressions, it may take a while for the newbies to earn the same emotional investment as their predecessors. Josh Windass, a striker famed for his refusal to celebrate (“I just don’t get that happy when I score”), for example, doesn’t exactly scream reality TV star. That said, his matter-of-factness may well help to ground a show that tends to over-romanticize.

While “Welcome to Wrexham” is undoubtedly still the kind of resolutely feel-good TV which can restore your faith in humanity, it needs to acknowledge that its rags-to-riches narrative has been given the final whistle. 

“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 5 premieres Thursday, May 14 on Hulu, FXX, with Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers with two new episodes. New episodes will be released weekly.

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Obama Relives Tan Suit Debacle In ‘Life, Larry & Pursuit of Unhappiness’

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As Larry David‘s comedic trip through U.S. history comes to an end, he took credit for one of the nation’s more recent presidential scandals.

On Friday’s season finale of the HBO sketch comedy miniseries Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance as himself in a sketch set in 2014, as David advised him to wear the now-infamous, outrage-inducing tan suit during his live press conference on military response to ISIS.

Following some banter on how the POTUS avoids stains, David accidentally spills juice on Obama’s suit jacket when he leaves the room. When the 44th president returns, the comedian recommends he wear the tan suit that Obama planned on taking it to Turin for NATO Summit, for “a daytime event, it’s outdoors, a little more casual.”

“First of all, it’s a gorgeous suit,” David declared. “And this is casual Friday!”

“It is a great suit,” admitted Obama, as David told him, “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move. … Old lips won’t let you down. You’ll thank me!”

As Obama models the look, David gives him his signature, “Pretty good! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.”

“You sure about this?” asks Obama, as David assures him, “Never been more sure about anything in my life. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”

Obama’s cameo in the finale comes as David marks the United States Semiquencentennial with the seven-part sketch comedy limited series, which recounts major events in U.S. history through the comedian’s signature observational humor.

David’s longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm partner Jeff Schaffer, who serves as an executive producer on Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, previously told Deadline that Obama, who produced under his Higher Ground banner, reached out to his buddy David to ask if he’d be interested in making the show to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.

“When you’re doing a show about American history, you want to do it warts and right now we have this orange saggy wart that we wish would go away,” said Schaffer. “But the nice thing about having President Obama produce this and be a part of it is that this country’s had a lot of fuck ups, we’ve seemed to have learned very little, but we’re still moving forward sometimes, and then we move back a little bit, but we always move forward again. While Larry’s pointing out a lot of the steps back, the President is telling us we can still step forward.”

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Matthew McConaughey Performs “Quill” From ‘Rivals of Amziah King’ — Watch

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Matthew McConaughey shows off his vocal skills (and some hidden banjo talents) with his latest role in The Rivals of Amziah King.

On Friday, Lakeshore Records released the single and music video for “Quill” from the original motion picture soundtrack, performed by the Oscar-winning and co-star Ben Hardesty, also featuring Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.

Set in the backwoods of Oklahoma, The Rivals of Amziah King follows the musically gifted Amaziah King (McConaughey) and his bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amaziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the chance to reconnect and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amaziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.

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Premiering Aug. 14 in theaters, the Andrew Patterson-written-and-directed drama also stars Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell.

Producers are David Heyman, Teddy Schwarzman, Jeffrey Clifford, Michael Heimler, James Montague and Will Greenfield.

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Jane Schoenbrun On Tackling “Toxic Soup” Of Slasher Genre In ‘Camp Miasma’

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With their latest directorial outing, Jane Schoenbrun used subtle pieces of nostalgia to deconstruct the slasher genre.

The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer/director explained to Deadline that they wanted to create “a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary,” noting the frequent symbolism of candy and junk food as providing an atmosphere “that’s actually safe” while diving into a horror movie or exploring sexuality after trauma.

“There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe,” said Schoenbrun, who is non-binary. “Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, ‘Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.’”

In Schoenbrun’s latest film, Hannah Einbinder stars as queer director Kris, who is tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. While courting Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, to reprise her role, the pair spirals into a psychosexual frenzy as the slasher’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), comes to life.

Acknowledging the problematic trans representation of horror films like Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Schoenbrun admitted the genre has been “catnip to me since I was 10 years old,” and they jumped at the chance to direct their own.

Jane Schoenbrun at the
Jane Schoenbrun attends the ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ premiere on Aug. 5, 2026 in New York City.

“So many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals … And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy,” they explained.

“But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants,” said Schoenbrun. “It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.”

Read on about Jane Schoenbrun’s love letter to the slasher genre with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, now playing in theaters.

DEADLINE: It was really fun to see the slasher genre through your eyes. Tell me about finding inspiration in that genre and “final girls.” 

JANE SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world because it’s just one of those genres that has been catnip to me since I was 10 years old. I just raided the horror section of the video store as a kid from an age when I really shouldn’t have been doing that, like in 5th grade, I watched in the span of about one week, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think that I was always drawn to movies and really anything entertainment where it felt forbidden in some way, like the thing on the tape, how is that even allowed? And that’s the thing that I love about a lot of my favorite slashers. Don’t get me wrong, I love like brutal ones, like I love Texas Chainsaw, that’s a nasty movie at its core, and that’s what’s so special about it. But so many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals of, OK, what’s the most outrageous way that like these like dumb kids can get killed? But watching it, it’s not about fear a lot of the time, it’s about joy and celebration. And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy. But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Sleepway Camp or Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface in drag. It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language. 

‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026)

DEADLINE: I’m curious about the symbolism of all the processed junk food and the chandelier of wrappers.

SCHOENBRUN: The junk food in the movie, I forget when it found its way in there. It’s like so much of the movie is about, like I said, ritual, about being in a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary, whether that be Kris [Hannah Einbinder] in bed, with, you know, with Raisinets and the popcorn, watching a schlocky horror movie, or the two characters learning how to be present and enjoy sex after a lot of trauma. There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe. Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, “Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.”

DEADLINE: And one thing I really love—I just feel like it’s a theme in your work—is how it depicts the way media and entertainment influence us. Why does that inspire you? 

SCHOENBRUN: I think it comes from a fascination and sensitivity to the complex relationship between what we think of as fiction and what we think of as reality, which we tend to, as a society, think of as pointing in one direction. Like, reality dictates fiction, not vice-versa, but when you actually look at the way the world works, it’s like one echoes off the other. And I think a complicated, sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful way, where the fiction, the cultural norms, the things we grow up looking at on our screens, the roles that we’re told people play, they kind of inspire us to create reality. There’s something liberating when you start thinking in that way. I think it’s a way of thinking that we as a culture, could do a lot more of. To think about the idea of fiction inspiring reality just as much as reality is inspiring fiction, is a potential path to liberating us from this hellscape that they’re telling us is the only way the world can be. 

Gillian Anderson in ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026)

DEADLINE: And I know you have the Secretary reading. Tell me what it’s been like prepping for that and why you all chose that movie. 

SCHOENBRUN: I mean, that was such a huge influence on on Miasma. There just aren’t that many fun and funny movies about deviant sex. And just the way that movie is like feather light while talking about really raw and taboo things, it is just really inspiring to me. And the dynamic between those two main characters is definitely one that had a lot of influence on on Kris and Billy’s [Gillian Anderson] relationship in Miasma. And it’s already to me a very queer movie in its way, but having Gillian reading the James Spader part and Hannah reading the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, I think it’s just gonna be like a very unique joy. Honestly, we’ve been prepping a little bit, but I think it’s just gonna be about getting up there and feeling the chemistry of it all, and just letting these folks who we have all gotten to know each other really, really well, but we haven’t actually done anything wacky and creative like that in a while, like as a reunion, it’s gonna be a real blast, I think.

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