“What are you watching at the moment?”

It’s a question I regularly ask my Stylist colleagues (and, increasingly, anyone I ever encounter), and when I posed it last week I was struck by how many of my workmates, even the self-professed non-sporty ones, had been engrossed in the new wave of sports documentaries on TV.

The power of these documentaries extends far beyond the walls of the Stylist office. Beckham, the series about the footballer (and that Rolls Royce school drop-off) got Netflix’s biggest audience of the year in its week of launch with 3.8 million viewers in the first few days alone. While Formula 1 doc Drive To Survive is about to launch its sixth series to its millions of fans.

What’s interesting is that it’s not typically the sport that makes these docuseries so successful and compelling (to me, at least; I’m sure Manchester United fans would have something different to say). They’re about the universality of failure and success. About motivation, and what drives someone to push their body to the limit to get what they want. By their very nature, there are plenty of moments of high-stakes drama and tension. It sounds like the basis of a six-part BBC thriller right there, doesn’t it?

Bored of true crime documentaries? Try one of these sports docuseries instead