PICK OF THE WEEK

Netflix

Maybe you think you can live without a six-hour documentary series about competitive cheerleading. You see it on the Netflix home page and think “oh yup . . . what else is there” or “didn’t they already make this?” (you’re probably thinking of the marching band one) and that’s completely understandable, but it’s wrong.

Cheer is as good as everyone has been saying it is. And a lot of people have been saying it’s good since it began a couple of weeks ago.

The series follows a year in the life of the 40-strong Navarro College Cheer squad, one of the most successful competitive cheer squads in the United States. The sport — and it definitely is a sport — is misunderstood, even in the US, and its athletes — and they definitely are athletes — train relentlessly, pushing their bodies to scary extremes (Cheer drinking game: sip every time someone gets a suspected concussion in training).

It’s all in the pursuit of the perfect two-minute-15-second routine, which they only get one chance to perform at national champs. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Running the cheer programme at this small-town Texas community college is remarkable character Monica Aldama (Coach Monica), a woman for whom the personality descriptor "Type A" feels like an understatement. In the first episode she talks about how she went to business school and was all set for a high-flying career in finance, before taking that cut-throat mentality and applying it to competitive cheer instead.

You watch Coach Monica’s face for any hint of concern as another squad member is taken away for a head injury assessment after a pyramid gone wrong, but her expression never changes. She doesn’t even put down the iPad she’s constantly filming on. So intense, so bizarre.

“This isn’t Bring It On,” explains one of Coach Monica’s assistants. “This is serious.”