10 Best Football TV Series To Stream While The Season Is On Hiatus

Available on: Netflix

OK, so only one of this eight-part Netflix docuseries about how sporting failure is far more compelling than success is actually about football. But maybe once die hard football lovers have been captivated by the freakishness of Torquay United's 1986/87 battle against relegation from the old Fourth Division (actually Losers' Episode 2, although they can be watched in any order), then they'll be in the right mental space to appreciate the surprisingly uplifting redemptive story of short-lived boxing champ Michael Bentt or any of Losers' other triumph-in-failure tales.

The first season in which it was actually possible to get relegated out of the Football League and into the Non-League pyramid (prior to this Torquay had had to apply for re-election to the league on finishing bottom), 1986/87 was a bizarre season for the club.

A relegation dogfight featuring an actual canine, anyone who doesn't already know how one of Torquay's players being bitten by a police dog during the final match of the season set up some climactic injury time drama is in for a hell of a ride here.

And, yes, the football story is just the appetiser for anyone who wants a fuller palette of sporting defeat. Losers gives us losses in everything from golf to curling and varying from farcical failures to tragic ones. It's the show for anybody who thinks winning is the dullest thing about sport.