Must Watch review KSI: In Real Life

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review KSI: In Real Life.

A 2023 British documentary film produced by Amazon Prime Video, that focuses on the life and career of KSI, a English YouTuber, rapper and boxer.

Scott says, “They really managed to get to the heart of some really personal things he’s not opened up about before.”

"I don’t think this is necessarily appealing to people who might not be familiar with KSI. But I do think – the amount of stuff they’re able to say and the amount of stuff that he was really opening up about was really rather profound and really sensitively handled."

"Because normally I find that when there’s a documentary on a particular subject and it’s one of those ‘lets go behind and see what they’re really like’ – it ends up being still a very PR-driven, very fawning interview where you don’t really see anything being revealed at all. But - this is probably because of Mindhouse and Louis Theroux’s expertise – they really managed to get to the heart of some really personal things he’s not opened up about before."

"He talks about childhood pressure and this fear of failure and he’s incredibly open about the fact that he thinks he got there, not because he’s naturally talented, but because he has done so much hard work honing in on his skill. And there are some contributors in this documentary who say that they look up to him because he has a similar work ethic to other children who come from immigrant parents."

Hayley says, “It's full of honest raw thoughts about real, vulnerable things.”

"Full disclosure, I had never heard of this person until I watched this documentary. Him saying that he’s one of the most famous people in England was brand new information to me. But this just hammers home just how much he has grown up and become famous within YouTube, which is a whole other world."

"He is massively famous in a fenced-off famousness where there are whole new kinds of celebrities and they’re ones that kids grow up with and think they know pretty intimately because they’ve seen so many videos in his house and of his family. This documentary lays out the things that were hidden and the ways his real life differed from the one he presented in the videos."

Hayley says. “this is the stuff you don’t get to see… it’s the stuff they don’t broadcast.”

"As a documentary, they got pretty good stuff out of him. I mean, you’d hope so – they’ve been working on this for years and they’ve spent so much time with him. It's full of honest raw thoughts about real, vulnerable things. And he talks a lot about the dangers of having your entire life filmed and then trying to live up to the character you’ve created for yourself."

"It’s not the kind of documentary you can watch as an outsider and be won over by. To me, this is like a real story for fans. So long standing fans of KSI will love it and also anyone interested in the world of YouTubers will probably love it because this is the stuff you don’t get to see… it’s the stuff they don’t broadcast."

KSI: In Real Life is available now on Amazon Prime Video.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.

This week, the team also reviewed Shrinking and Putin Vs The West.

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