The complex issue of wildlife conservation comes under scrutiny in Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau's Trophy, which sparked as much heated debate as Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani's The Ivory Game (2016). Examining the impact that hunters, poachers, philanthropists and NGOs are having on the fight to save a growing number of species from extinction, this is a documentary that presents conflicting arguments without proffering any solutions of its own. But, while some may discard this as an instance of infomercial fence-sitting, Schwarz and Clusiau succeed in demonstrating that there are no easy answers when it dollars speak louder than sense.

Somewhere in Texas, sheep breeder Philip Glass takes his son Jasper to a hide in order to shoot his first deer. The boy is excited and talks like a veteran hunter who considers life cheap. Bristling with a sense of entitlement, he holds up the antlers of his kill to pose for photographs, as his father gushes with pride that his boy has bagged his first trophy.

In South Africa, John Hume and his team ride across the veldt in search of a rhinoceros requiring its biennial horn shearing. Having tranquilised the magnificent beast, a ranger saws off the horn in order to make it less prone to poaching. Hume considers this sacrifice a small price to pay for survival and declares that no species has ever become extinct while a farmer is profiting from it. A caption informs us that rhino numbers have declined from 500,000 in 1900 to under 30,000 today. However, this is hardly surprising, as over 60% of the world's wild animals have disappeared since 1970.

Showing off the black-headed lambs he breeds, Glass scoffs at those who sentimentalise animals and view them as pets. He considers this mentality to be infantile and baldly states that domesticated creatures exist solely to be bred and eaten. This approach is shared by Christo Gomes, a hunting outfitter who runs Mabula Pro Safaris outside the South African town of Bela-Bela. His rangers are shown capturing and measuring a furious crocodile prior to its relocation. Reminding us that animals remain wild in captivity, Gomes insists that their purpose is to improve human life, whether they are being viewed, cooked or skinned for clothing. He takes the camera on a tour of the Safari Club International Convention in Las Vegas, as four snarling stuffed lions are being arranged for a display. Joe Hosmer explains that there are 2000 stalls in the vast hall and admits that it might seem odd for hunters and conservationists to share an event. Yet every penny raised from the $50,000 auction of an elephant hunt will be reinvested in Africa. Despite his reassurances, however, the sight of a table made from a rearing crocodile and the braying of two women announcing their plans to kill a croc and a zebra leave the impression that the majority of delegates are simply seeking an experience to boast about on social media rather than showing a concern for the long-term welfare of animals in the wild.

Reiterating this sentiment, Adam Roberts, the CEO of Born Free USA, reveals that clients can book any kind of hunt they want and can even select the species, age and fur colour of their quarry. Ecologist Craig Packer denounces the convention as a meat market and describes how people are willing to pay big bucks to land the Big Five of a buffalo, a leopard, an elephant, a lion and a rhino. He curses the macho kudos that such hunters acquire, but being known in the hunting community inspires Glass, who is fretting about a potential ban on shooting lions and decides to step up his training by visiting a facility that mounts buffalo and elephant heads on to pulley-powered targets to hone his reflexes.

In a den filled with animal trophies and a poster for Osama bin-Laden. Tim Fallon, a hunting instructor at the SAAM Safari School, proclaims his excitement at helping people prepare for the trip of a lifetime. He guides Glass through a session in a mocked-up wilderness, where he whoops with delight at feeling the adrenaline rush and admits that he hasn't experienced hunter's remorse since he was a kid. But, while Glass prattles on about realising his dream, Fallon insists that animals need to be managed, as their terrain is being reduced by mankind. In his eyes, while they may be enjoying their sport, hunters are also performing an important ecological task in helping to keep down the excess number of elephants in places like Botswana.

Clearly seeing himself on some sort of heroic mission, Glass lands in Namibia and tells a story about defying his mother to shoot a red bird. He recalls loving it as much dead as he had done when it was alive and concludes that his respect for Nature in all its forms has subsequently prevented him from having a conscience about killing, especially as he is only out to kill one each of the Big Five rather than slaughter them en masse. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that a species could still be wiped out one bullet at a time, but Glass is not a deep thinker for all his protestations of being someone who has delved into the subject of hunting.

His attitude contrasts markedly with that of Hume, who is distraught at having to build a funeral pyre for the mother of a two year-old rhino calf whose frightened whimpering is heartbreaking. He damns the poachers who orphaned this vulnerable creature and, yet, still saws off the horn rather than leaving it to burn with the carcass. Under Hume, the Buffalo Dream Ranch near Kierksdorp has amassed the world's largest private collection of rhinos and he tries to breed 200 a year in order to maintain his stocks. Vet Michelle Otto commends his efforts and hopes more people will follow suit and open their own sanctuaries.

But Hume's motives are not wholly philanthropic, as he is well aware of the value of rhino horn and the fact that there are more people in Asia who believe in its healing power than there are Christians. He deplores poaching because the animal is invariably killed during the robbery, whereas he uses humane methods to sedate creatures that he hopes will keep on supplying him with horn for many years to come. Son Richard approves of his father's methods and they curse the fact that it is currently illegal to trade in rhino horn in South Africa because of a government moratorium. They argue that the shortage caused by this ban has led to an increase in poaching and a dramatic depletion in numbers, while they have 40 tons of horn stockpiled in a maximum security facility with a market value in excess of $60 million.

The notion that rhino horn is worth more than gold or heroin is staggering, but the statistics provided in the next caption make for even more dismaying reading. In 2007, only 13 rhinos were poached in South Africa. However, this figure increased to 83 in 2008, 122 in 2009, 333 in 2010, 448 in 2011, 668 in 2012, 1004 in 2013 and 1215 in 2014 and Hume is convinced that poaching would stop if the trade was legalised, as no one would want kill the goose that lays the golden egg. His logic seems sound, but wildlife charities worldwide decry it, as the animals would be removed from their natural habitats and would, therefore, cease to be wild.

The ironically named Captive Strip in Namibia is one of the few areas in Africa without fences and hunter Gysbert Van der Westhuyzen reassures us that Glass will have to work hard for his trophy in this kind of environment, as it has been designed to give the animal a chance while also giving the visitor a thrill. As he has been planning this trip for 18 months, Glass feels he has earned the right to walk-and-stalk the terrain and pull the trigger. He tries to describe how anticipation turns to joy and then relief after a creature buckles. But nothing beats touching a kill for the first time and making it your own. On this occasion, however, Glass is prevented from shooting a bull elephant because it is too young. This doesn't stop him from lining up the creature in his sights in order to reassert his sense of power as to whether it lives or dies.

Roberts laments that hunting has long been a test of manhood and, over monochrome images of Teddy Roosevelt with a rifle in his hand, he despairs that British and American males with more money than brains come to African in search of a life-defining adventure. He finds triumphalist literary accounts of bagging a trophy nauseating and trashes the myth that hunting is part of the conservation industry. Packer agrees that the new breed of `shooter' doesn't want to see majestic creatures in the wild or savour the spirit of exploration in travelling to remote forests and jungles. They simply view an animal head as a commodity to hang on the wall for their friends to admire and will make a dash for Africa as soon as their permits arrive and head home the moment they have their bounty. In his view, this isn't hunting, it's designer killing.

Mabula Pro Safaris operates according to the pen principle. Thus, we get to see a group of Africans throwing rocks into a pond to force a crocodile into the open so that a man can shoot it in front of his female companions. He proves an inexpert marksman and has to put his beer down in order to take proper aim. When the crocodile swims away and slithers on to the opposite bank, the park rangers capture it and bind its jaws so that the heroic huntsman can fire a bullet into its brain and pump his fist and emit a volley of expletives, as though he has accomplished something monumentally brave. As he rides back to the compound, the unnamed American sees white lions in an enclosure and asks how much it would cost to add one of them to his bill. He sniggers when he is informed that Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer paid $50,000 to gun down Cecil the lion in 2015, and one of the women jokes that she would need to extend his trophy room if he ever added a giraffe to the warthogs and baboons he has already bagged.

Such insufferably boorish behaviour will only make the hunting constituency seem more loathsome to many. But Gomes, a former cattleman who realised that there was a fortune to be made from customising safaris, regards such yahoos as valued customers. He takes us on a tour of his estate and confides the importance of providing clients with an authentic experience. Hence he has constructed a drinking hole to accommodate those who want to pick off their prey while they are going about their everyday activities. He has also opened a taxidermy workshop to that guests can pose with their trophies in the safe knowledge that everything has been carefully labelled so that animals can't be mixed up. One visitor kisses his wife beside his stuffed prize and quickly consults his phone to see if oil prices have risen sufficiently for him to nab another before he heads home.

This philistinic ostentation will rile the vast majority of viewers. But Gomes thrives on such vulgar braggadocio and he attends the Stud Game Breeders auction in the hope of improving his bloodlines. Pecker dismisses his intentions as capitalist cynicism, however, as safari owners have realised that they can make more money with buffalo or sable antelope than ordinary cattle and have now started breeding them with outsize antlers to make them more desirable to trophy hunters. Yet ranchers returning wild animals to land that they had once cleared to rear cattle are boosting numbers and, ironically, there are now more lions in South Africa than there were a century ago. Thus, farming wild animals might just be a feasible option in the race to save them. But this solution becomes harder to swallow when Gomes presents pictures of a buffalo that had sired over 50 offspring before he was sold to a Canadian client for `harvesting'. He suggests that the animal's legacy is honoured each time the hunter shows off his trophy and he asks for filming to stop when he becomes overwhelmed by the thought of all the creatures he has loved and let go when the time was right.

Many will see these as crocodile tears, but there is no doubting the exhilaration that Glass feels when he kills his elephant. He sees no shame in the fact that he felled it as it was running away and takes the congratulations of his aides, as the creature bellows in agony before Glass unloads another bullet into his chest and takes a well-earned cigarette break as his victim lets out a long sigh of expiratory pain. With incredible patience, Glass lingers while the wounds are cleaned up so that he can pose for photographs. As plaintiff strings lament on the soundtrack, Van der Westhuyzen mumbles his regret that Glass had chosen such a young animal before an aerial shot looks down on the carcass in a little patch of scrub. The savage pointlessness of the kill is inescapable, as, even though claims could be made about over-population, this particular elephant lost its life to satiate a buffoon's bloodlust. As the horror of the previous scene sinks in, a caption reveals that elephant numbers have fallen from 10 million in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1979 and 350,000 in 2015. Eleven hundred elephants are legally hunted in Africa each year, but a further 30,000 are poached for their tusks. As villagers inspect the carcass of Glass's elephant, some mourn the fact it had not fully grown. But one man is glad to see the back of it, as it had been stealing his watermelons. Van der Westhuyzen explains that the locals had once poached elephants for their meat, but they have now been taught that they are more valuable alive. Nevertheless, they crowd in, as the elephant's ears are sliced off and its body is hacked to pieces with an axe. Moreover, they all grab their share of the spoils and one fellow grumbles that Glass should have killed a full-size bull so that there would be more to go around.

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley, wildlife officer Chris Moore visits a village in which five goats have been mauled by a lion. The residents are aware that it's illegal to kill lions, but they are afraid and some have started keeping their cows in their house in order to protect them. Moore admits that he often has to take tough decisions, but would always conclude that a dead lion is preferable to a dead human. He claims it's all part of life and that wild animals are predators who will kill domesticated animals. Colleague Charles Khumalo is more openly conflicted, as he sympathises with people who are being told to stop poaching after their livelihoods have been destroyed.

Back in Kierksdorp, Hume finds some butchered female rhinos. Two were pregnant, while another was with her calf. He despairs that they have been gunned down in cold blood when they might have gone on to produce many more babies. Some of his neighbours question his tactics and Hume becomes animated as he insists that legal trading in rhino horn would put the poachers out of business. But the stark truth about why locals risk their life and liberty to poach is laid bare when Moore raids a village and tries to intimidate a suspect's wife into revealing where her husband keeps his guns. He lectures the villagers that they face long jail sentences if they are caught, but he also worries that the balance between human dignity and species survival also needs to be maintained.

Hume suspects that one of his own security team has been assisting the poachers and this is confirmed by the police. Li Lotriet offers to provide a better service, as Hume reveals that he has over $50 million in trying to protect his rhinos with choppers, alarmed fences and an elite response unit. He wants to teach the poachers a lesson not to mess with him, but Lotriet urges caution. As Hume scratches a young rhino who clearly enjoys the fuss, his sister Pam praises his ranching efforts and Richard promises to do all he can to build on his legacy. But he knows that his father receives regular death threats and is concerned that he will run out of money unless he can start dealing the horn in his warehouse. So, having raised $24 million by selling one of his safari resorts, Hume launches a campaign to persuade the South African government to lifr the ban to ensure he can remain in business and keep the poachers at bay. On the Zambezi, Moore describes ambushing some poachers during a midnight sting. He also recalls having to shoot a rogue elephant and wonders whether hunters become addicted to the sense of tension they must feel while stalking their prey and the relief they experience when their mission is over. Despite celebrating his birthday, the sole sensation that Glass feels is frustration that a petty bureaucrat in Africa has dared to deprive him of his inalienable right as a citizen of the United States to kill a lion by placing the species on the endangered list. Such Trumpist fulminating only serves to make Glass more resistible. But the South African Predator Association is also unhappy with Pretoria because 70% of hunters come from the US and Canada and SAPA President Pieter Potgieter asserts that his industry will die unless hunters are given free access to lions that they will have to cull themselves and sell their bones for a fraction of the fees that foreigners are prepared to pay to hunt them.

Gomes concurs that animals only have a value as trophies, as they are otherwise too expensive to keep. But Will Travers, the CEO of Born Free, says that Cecil helped create a groundswell among social media types raised on The Lion King. A witty YouTube bowdlerisation of Disney mocking Palmer as a swaggering popinjay is shown alongside raving denunciations, which serve to show how the modern media works. But the furore persuaded the three largest US airlines to ban carrying trophies back from Africa and Travers hopes that the big companies involved in the hunting chain will step back from the negative publicity and dent the industry's allure.

Travers considers Hume to be more interested in profit than conservation and we see a street demonstration in London against his rhino ranch. The pair debate before an audience and there seems little sympathy for Hume's approach, as Travers condemns the mantra, `if it pays, it stays'. A shot of a man in a cherry picker tossing meat over the fence into a lion enclosure at Gomes's compound seems to back up this view of commodified Nature. But, as a rhino roams freely on Hume's property, the direct comparison between the two business plans seems hard to draw.

The scene shifts to the High Court in Pretoria, where Isabel Goodman struggles to make her case while representing the Minister of the Environment, as the judges find it baffling that evidence that the moratorium has led to an escalation in poaching isn't regarded as a bad thing by the ministry. Mike Maritz for Hume declares it despicable that the minister is willing to let his client offer rhinos for hunting, but not for him to sell horn and keep the beasts alive.

At the Vegas convention, protesters accuse hunters of greenwashing their psychosis and Glass grins from a distance as he watches fellow hunters being accused of being murderers. As he mingles with the demonstrators, he calls himself `a conservation hunter' and swears that he is helping fund the conservancies. But one man confronts him and states that he is merely fostering corruption among those interested in profit.

Packer opines that animal rights groups tend to be naive in their advocacy, as they focus on the creatures being protected in reserves while ignoring the forests that are being chopped down around them and driving lions and elephants into the space that indigenous peoples need for their crops. He suggests that Western do-gooders and Africans living with reality have different value systems and seems to draw the conclusion that vehement opposition to hunting misses the point, as does the hunting lobby's claim that they are the last legitimate conservationists. In his eyes, the real issue is that corrupt governments are destroying their countries in return for corporate cash. Back in Zimbabwe, Moore admits that it seems perverse that his anti-poaching unit exists to preserve wildlife for hunters to kill. But that is his reality and he would rather have carefully monitored hunting than unrestricted poaching with no sense of control.

While others struggle with their consciences, Glass returns to African to claim his lion. He gloats about having killed a hippopotamus basking in a lake and it's sickening to watch this noble creature recoil and sink beneath the water so that a jackass can feel good about himself. In order to lure the lion into the open, impala are hauled into trees as bait, as Glass quotes Scripture in proclaiming that God gave Man dominion over all the animals and that it would be disrespecting the Creator if we didn't show our appreciation by killing them. Such terrifying logic reveals much about the American conservative psyche, particularly when Glass denounces those who believe in evolution as fools who are too arrogant to recognise that God created everything in the heavens and on the earth. As he sits in a jeep waiting for his team to set up a hide, Glass reminisces about childhood hunts with his father, when he had been forced to work things out for himself rather than having someone else flush out his quarry so all he had to do was pull the trigger. Oblivious to the irony, he tears up in thanking his father for the valuable lessons he had taught him. But, rather than witnessing Glass claim more undeserved glory, the co-directors cut away to taxidermist Travis Courtney putting the finishing touches to a lion. He dabs at the eyes, as he laments the desecration of natural habitats, as animals are invariably driven into human areas, where they will always come off second best. Continuing to work, he dismisses the absurd medical fallacies that cost so many creatures their lives and ponders the possibility that animals will ultimately be kept in zoos and museums. This thought saddens him, but it also inspires him to do justice to each animal he stuffs, as it might turn out to be the last record of its existence.

John Hume feels sure that rhinos know they are endangered and places the blame squarely on humankind for doing too little to help people like him save them from extinction. Back in the jungle, Glass bags his lion and sobs as he crouches beside it. He strokes its mane and examines its paws and seems awed by the beauty of the creature he has just massacred. As he remarks upon the red and black in the fur, the camera fixes on the glassy stare of the lion's eye. But Glass is quick to shift the focus back on to himself, as he gives the carcass a proprietorial slap and hollers that no African bureaucrat is going to take his trophy away from him.

A closing caption reveals that Hume won his case and that it's now legal to sell rhino horn within South Africa. However, opportunities to ship to the booming markets in Asia are still restricted and the future of his ranch remains in doubt. As for Glass, he only needs a rhinoceros to complete his Big Five. Few will wish him well in his endeavours after watching this sobering documentary, as even though Schwarz and Clusiau set him up as the villain of the piece, Glass keeps making it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to respect his standpoint.

Christo Gomes also struggles to make a morally credible case, but John Hume's rhino initiative appears rooted in a sincere desire to do the right thing and, on the evidence presented here, many will find it hard to fathom the intransigent hostility of his opponents. But that is the key to this carefully constructed and often compelling study of the moral contradictions thrown up by these emotive issues, as it's hard to see how meaningful solutions can emerge from such entrenched positions. One can only hope that the ominous ticking of the eco clock will focus minds before it's too late for so many precious species.

No one can accuse New College alumna Lucy Walker of playing it safe. Her debut documentary, Devil's Playground (2002), explored the Amish rumspringa rite of passage, while Blindsight (2006) accompanied six blind Tibetan teenagers on an expedition to the north face of Mount Everest. In Waste Land (2010), she focused on the Rio de Janeiro rubbish dump where artist Vik Muniz finds materials and inspiration, while The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2001) took her to Japan in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake. Subsequently, she profiled snowboarder Kevin Pearce as he fought back from a brain trauma in The Crash Reel (2013) and, in The Lion's Mouth Opens (2014), she followed actress-director Marianna Palka (whose offbeat drama, Bitch, was reviewed last week) in her bid to discover whether she had inherited her father's Huntingdon's disease.

Now, Walker turns to music in Buena Vista Social Club: Adios, which revisits some of the veteran Cuban musicians who had featured in Wim Wenders's much-loved actuality, Buena Vista Social Club (1999). With the German exec producing, Walker is able to recycle plenty of footage from his intimate record of the concert tour that followed the release of the Grammy-winning 1997 album that had been produced by American musician, Ry Cooder. Some dismissed Walker's sequel as a cynical cash-in that exploits performers now in their 80s and 90s. But many will have wondered what happened to the brilliant musicians whose careers were shaped by the 1959 Cuban Revolution and this affectionate catch-up fills in the odd gap while bringing admirers up to date.

Following a radio announcement of the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016, Walker cuts back two decades to show Cuban bandleader Juan de Marcos González returning to the Buena Vista Social Club and discovering that it has been refitted as a living space and a gymnasium. The old dance floor still exists in places, but a leap of imagination is required to envisage the venue in its heyday. However, the musicians who once graced the stage are now playing in New York and reflecting on the mixed blessing of becoming famous in their old age and the frustration of knowing that the cheering audience know so little about the historical and social realities they have endured back in Cuba.

A caption informs us that the indigenous Taíno people were famous for their music celebrations in pre-colonial times. But they were all but wiped out after Spain claimed Cuba in 1492 and slaves started to arrive from Africa. This pernicious practice continued unchallenged until 1844, which was known as `the year of the lash' because of the violent suppression of the abolition movement. However, slavery was finally eradicated in 1886, the same decade that saw European and Afro-Cuban music melded into the `son' form that has remained popular in the east of the country.

In 1895, poet José Martí launched a campaign for Cuban independence, which resulted in a break from Spain in 1899. In the 1900s, Afro-Cuban drums including the conga were banned. But, by 1922, Radio Cuba was spreading the son style across the nation and bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez succeeded in reintroducing congas into his music in the 1940s. The following decade saw the golden age of Cuban music. However, as the montage of vintage footage accompanying the credits ends, skirts the Castro years to hail the release of the bestselling revival album, Buena Vista Social Club.

Staying in 1998, we hear Marcos González and record label boss Nick Gold explaining how they had come to make the disc after learning that lots of musicians from the pre-revolutionary heyday were still alive and playing across Cuba. Among them was pianist Rubén González, who had accompanied Rodríguez as he created the salsa and mambo sounds that had become the bedrock of East Cuban music. González describes how termites had eaten his piano, while trumpet legend Guajiro Mirabal recalls how he became a master of the improvised `descarga' style.

One of six children, guitarist Eliades Ochoa grew up in Santiago de Cuba and earned a living playing in bars and brothels, where the hookers often had to help him out. Singer Pío Leyva was one of the great `soneros' of his day, yet he insists he merely sang from the heart because that's what people wanted to hear. As a boy, bassist Orlando `Cachaíto' López wanted to play the violin, but his grandfather reminded him that the double bass was a family tradition and 30 members of his family currently play the instrument. His mastery is matched by that of Barbarito Torres, who became such a virtuoso that he was dubbed `the Jimi Hendrix of the laúd' and it amuses him that, when Cooder gave him a cassette of a solo that he wanted him to copy, he realised that he was listening to himself.

Singer and trova guitarist Compay Segundo had started out in Los Compadres with Lorenzo Hierrezuelo in 1947. He was 90 when Cooder found him and he chats to locals about his secret of only taking small portions of chicken and love so that he doesn't get bored. Segundo also hailed from Santiago and had worked in a cigar factory in order to raise the money to travel to Havana, where he started to play in 1934. However, racism was so endemic during this period that clubs were segregated. But lighter skinned musicians were smuggled into `whites only' venues and Marcos González describes how his father had been forced to play exhausting shifts for a pittance, while González remembers being told that he looked too black to pass muster in the stricter clubs.

During the original sessions, Cooder had wanted a softer singing voice and he had been fortunate enough to find Ibrahim Ferrer, who had made his name performing with Los Bocucos. Having turned his back on music after many disappointments, Ferrer was cleaning shoes near the studio. But he had slipped straight back into his trademark soulful sweetness and Omara Portuondo recalls coming in from another studio to listen to him. She also came from a poor, but happy family and she revisits the house where her father had taught her so many songs to perform for the new occupants. Despite wanting to become a ballerina, she had been rejected because she was black and she had turned to singing because no one could stop her. Teaming with her sister Haydée in Cuarteto D'Aida, she was compared to Sarah Vaughan and she proudly remembers recording her theme tune, `Veinte Años', in a single take for Cooder's album.

In order to promote the disc, a number of the musicians (many of whom were elderly and retired) agreed to travel to play a gig at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London. They had to persuade Ferrer to be the frontman, as he was happy to stay at the back of the state. But he soon took to his new role and came to excel at improvisation, long before freestyle hip hop. Although well received, the London sessions were somewhat intimate and it was a concert at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam that ultimately raised the profile of the Buena Vista Social Club. Fortunately, Wenders was there to film it and his camera captures the backstage tension two days before the show, as Segundo refuses to accept that his guitar is out of tune on `Ay Candela' and Marcos Gonazález despairs of the combo being ready in time.

Declaring that he and Segundo went back a long way, Ochoa wistfully recalls what a privilege it had been to play with him again on `Chan Chan', a delightfully risqué song that Segundo reveals he had once performed for the Pope, who had thoroughly approved. Similarly, Portuondo had been delighted to see Ferrer again and she remembers encountering him for the first time some 50 years earlier when he had been a backing singer for Pacho Alonso, with whom she had appeared on TV with the Cuerteta D'Aida. Walker cuts to a grainy clip of them dancing together in the mid-1960s and contrasts this with poignant footage of them rehearsing all those years later.

Another Santiago native, Ferrer had lost his mother when he was 12 and he had been grateful to land a job hauling sugar sacks on the docks. The Revolution had also started in this eastern heartland and Castro had formed his own Quinteto Rebelde to put new socio-political lyrics to popular songs. Under the postwar Batista regime, black musicians had been much in demand in the clubs and casinos that had been opened by the Mafia. Indeed, singers like Cuerteta D'Aida were able to make good money singing in commercials for the likes of Winston cigarettes. But Portuondo insists that everyone had celebrated the Revolution because they hoped that Castro would eliminate racism. But, as Marcos González soberly states, it's easier to write about reform than introduce it.

Some were not happy with the change of government, however, as Haydée Portuondo had sent her daughter to Miami during Operation Peter Pan and she had missed her so much that she also left shortly afterwards. Hurt by what she felt at the time was a betrayal, Omara Portuondo had decided to go solo in 1967 and she retained her status under Castro. But Ferrer was reluctant to challenge Pacho Alonso and felt he had let everyone down when his attempt to leave Los Bocucos ended in comparative failure. But the evident pleasure he and Portuondo derive from rehearsing together is enchanting and there is a genuine warmth to the backstage banter.

Following their triumph in the Netherlands, the Buena Vista Social Club played Carnegie Hall to great acclaim in New York and a montage shows the elderly musicians touring the world and being feted like rock stars. Revelling in his new-found fame, Ferrer came into his own and we see him charming a crowd of 14,000 during an outdoor gig in Hyde Park the day after Elton John had only managed to attract an audience of 8000. As their adventure continued, the album earned a Grammy and Wenders received an Oscar nomination for his documentary. Yet Ferrer was denied a visa to attend the Grammys by the US authorities and he made sure that the world's media was in attendance when he posed with his awards.

When Segundo discovered Barbarito Torres in 1977, his mother had made him play even though he had buried his father the day before. During the making of Wenders's film, Segundo had returned to Santiago de Cuba to visit the grave of his grandmother, Ma Regina. She had died when he was seven, but he still recalls how she had always licked his legs when he returned late from an errand to check if he had been skiving in the sea. He had attended her funeral and had been told that she was being carried in a box to protect her from the sun while going to a party. Segundo remembers thinking that this was the proper way for a woman as important as his grandmother to travel and he had been given an heroic send-off after his own death in 2003. We see footage of his final performance, as he proudly boasts that he had fulfilled Marti's three conditions for a happy life, as he had fathered a child, planted a tree and written a book.

Despite suffering from memory lapses, Rubén González keeps playing and it's almost a miracle to see him struggle on to the stage and then play faultlessly for an adoring crowd. He jokes that the spirits of music must be protecting him, as we learn that he was awarded Cuba's highest cultural honour, the Order of Félix Varela, along with Ferrer and Portuondo, before his death in 2003. Ferrer also played to the end, drawing admiring gasps as he sashays on stage during a rendition of `Bruca Maningua', a song about black slaves demanding their freedom from the spirit-crushing white man. Looking back in his late 70s, Ferrer was pleased to get his last shot at success and singer Idania Valdés remembers his last performance at the Marciac Jazz Festival, when he was so ill that the organisers suggested cancelling. But Ferrer went on and sat down to sing, even though he needed oxygen after every other song. He died four days later in 2005 and, on his anniversary on 3 August, Portuondo sings his theme song `Dos Gardenias'.

She remains a trouper, although she looks to have slowed down in a shot of her walking across her home. But Ochoa keeps playing and attracts such a crowd at La Casa de Trova in Santiago de Cuba in 2016 that those who couldn't get into the hall danced in the street outside. A few months earlier, the new line-up had been invited to Washington by Barack Obama in a bid to cement improved relations with Cuba. Old stagers Portuondo, Ochoa and Torres had been joined by Valdés, pianist Rolando Luna and Mirabal's trumpeter grandson Guajirito and they had enjoyed the experience, despite having to dodge political questions from the press. They had also played their first gig in Miami in 2015 and trombonist Jesus `Aguaje' Ramos explains how important it was to reach out to the exiled community. Timbales player Filiberto Sanchez reminisces about playing there with Benny Moré in 1959, as his bandmates catch up with family members they had not seen in decades.

In March 2016, President Obama had flown to Havana to see Raúl Castro. He is shown braving the rain to meet ordinary Cubans and to attend a baseball game. But life goes on for the surviving members of the Buena Vista Social Club. We are introduced to tres player Papi Oviedo in a silent close-up, as a world tour concludes on home soil. Portuondo vows to keep singing until she draws her last breath, as not only does song make us human, but it also shows that the Spanish never managed to silence the slaves. A white-out montage pays a final tribute to González, Segundo, López (who died in 2009), Leyva (2006) and the previously unmentioned Manuel `Puntillita' Licea (2000) and Manuel Galbán (2011). And, fittingly, we close with the curtain coming down at the end of a Havana 2016 rendition of `Ay Candela' that has young and old alike dancing in the aisles.

Only the most curmudgeonly would deny the members of this wonderful collective its last hurrah. Walker may lean a little heavily on `found footage', but it's a genuine pleasure to renew acquaintance with the likes of Segundo, González and Ferrer, while getting to know more about Portuondo, Torres and Ochoa. As one would expect, the musicianship is impeccable and one is left hoping that the next generation is ready to assume the Buena Vista mantle. Some have sniffed at the inclusion of some farewell performances, but Ferrer's determination to sing when so clearly ailing is not only testament to the BVSC spirit, but also to that of Cuba itself, which keeps defying the odds and bouncing back from setbacks that sagacious external experts have confidently predicted will spell the end of the Castro era. But the last thing this fond and respectful documentary could ever be dubbed is exploitative, as is does more than its predecessor to put the music in a socio-historical context and to show its protagonists as the product of artistic and political struggle rather than just tenacious longevity.

There will always be times when a documentarist finds such meagre pickings among the archives that they become heavily reliant upon the best items they unearth. This is definitely true in the case of Lisa Immordino Vreeland's Love, Cecil, an engaging profile of the photographer and set-cum-costume designer Cecil Beaton, which makes extensive use of John Freemna's 1962 Face to Face interview and Bill Verity's tele-doc, Beaton By Bailey (1971), which pitted the 67 year-old against fellow shutterbug, David Bailey. Both programmes can be found in full on YouTube and it's interesting to see how Immordino Vreeland has filleted them and slotted the highlights in between her own talking-head interviews, extracts from Beaton's diaries and her inspired selection from his photo files. The result may be somewhat conventional. But, such is the subject's wit, eloquence and forthrightness that this gradually becomes an amusingly perceptive treatise on the rise of celebrity culture.

While being quizzed by John Freeman on the BBC's Face to Face in early 1962, Cecil Beaton confessed that he had no idea whether he best excelled as a photographer, a painter, a designer or a writer. In an extract from his diary (read with world-weary insight by Rupert Everett), he cursed the fact that he was unable to take a flattering self-portrait, as he knew himself too well. But, while he had exposed countless rolls of film and had used thousands of words to capture the fleeting moment, he continued to wander in `the labyrinth of choice' trying to find his métier. He concedes that ambition had driven him more than talent at the outset, but reveals that a need to reach the end of the rainbow now prevents him from turning back.

As an array of voices opines over a montage of still images, however, everything Beaton did had a unifying touch of grace and Vogue editor Hamish Bowles and photographer David Bailey note how he reinvented Edwardian chic in his own image in the Ascot sequence of George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964). Auctioneer Philippe Garner comments on Beaton's love of beauty and we see the title page of The Book of Beauty and some of his striking portraits, as Beaton declares that beauty is rarely static and that we all restlessly search for the next beautiful thing. Photographer Tim Walker suggests that Beaton had a relationship with an idealised vision of his sitters and, as a consequence, created the notion of finding `truth in fantasy'.

Yet Beaton didn't plan on remaining a photographer, as he initially took pictures as a means to an end. His fascination began with a love of theatre and a postcard of Lily Elsie in a white suit with a cigarette and cane. Garner claims Beaton was seduced by the escapist nature of theatre and that he determined to live his life intoxicated by the thrill he derived from the stage. At first, he enlisted sisters Nancy and Baba to be his models and never quite mastered the technical side of the art. But, having hated school and only learnt about life rather than anything scholastic, Beaton developed the knack of teaching himself what he needed to know.

Despite his mediocre academic record, he still went up to Cambridge in 1922 and set about becoming `a rabid aesthete' by studying the Renaissance and Diaghilev's Ballets Russe, as well as the theatre and photography. He discovered a talent for shocking people, with his modish costumes occasionally being complemented by drag outfits. Giving lectures a miss, Beaton helped found the drama club and designed stage scenery for numerous productions, while also acting. The photographs from these period have been carefully preserved in albums and look strikingly modern, even though they are almost a century old. It's intriguing to note how many were self-portraits and, as biographer Hugo Vickers notes, Beaton often sent these snaps to the London papers in order to promote himself and the production he was working on, in that order.

Leaving St John's College without a degree in 1925, Beaton lacked the confidence to act, the subject matter to write plays and the opening to design for the West End stage. So, he continued to photograph his sisters, who indulged his whims and later joked with him that he had made them twist like a corkscrew in order to strike the right poses. He often sent these pictures to journals like The Bystander and got the odd snap into the society pages of the mainstream press. Yet, as model Penelope Tree recalls, Beaton was terribly insecure and resented being the son of a timber merchant from Hampstead, who had preferred his younger brother, Reggie. Flitting between diary extracts and his Face to Face responses, Beaton admits that he had been happy until puberty, when he began to feel reined in and rebelled by painting his face with his mother's cosmetics.

Vickers and Sir Roy Strong note the difficulty of securing an entrée into society during the 1920s and explain that Beaton finally got into the charmed circle after the Honourable Stephen Tennant became his patron. Suddenly a member of the Bright Young Things, Beaton spent his time partying and we see home-movie footage of him dragging up in acted scenarios at Savay Farm in Denham in 1927. The dressing-up box played a key role in their revels, as they harked back to the elegance of the Regency and Belle Époque eras and Beaton discovered his milieu among these fellow escapists, who found fun in narcissism and subversion.

While Beaton lacked an inherited income and remained an outsider, his friends went along with every odd concept for pictures, with Daphne Du Maurier placing her head inside a Victorian glass dome and Edith Sitwell reclining amidst flowers and cellophane clouds. Daisy Fellows posed in front of crinkled silver foil and the result is stunning. But, as Beaton tells Sheridan Morley in an television interview, he was not averse to creating images that he knew would garner publicity. In one newspaper piece, he called them his `freak photographs' and explained how he could make the camera do gymnastics.

His father had been astonished by his success and by the fact that he had made such a splash in the United States, We see Beaton discussing beauty in an early talkie short from 1929, as he sought to create a self-promoting fuss by declaring that American girls couldn't hold a candle to their British counterparts, who were so ravishing that their beauty ought to be immortal. However, he did admire the wrists, feet and legs of American girls and described their movement as `perfect'. A wonderful shot at the end of the diatribe sees Beaton examine his nails in a moment of almost schoolboy vulnerability. Yet one senses even this was done for calculating effect, unlike the snaps he took on the streets of New York, which have an authenticity and energy that now seem at one and at odds with the Beaton style.

His campaign to get himself noticed led to a contract with Vogue and Contributing Editor Robin Muir suggests that Beaton brought a new sophistication and elegance to fashion photography. He was influenced by German Expressionism and French New Romanticism and made enough money to buy Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, which was painted by the likes of Rex Whistler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Christian Bérard and Salvador Dalí during the fabled weekend parties that Beaton used to host, where there was always something going on. He often sent invitations together with costume suggestions and always made his guests trace the outline of their hands on the wall in one of the bathrooms.

Despite claiming that he tried hard not to be, Beaton confided to his diary that he was `a terrible, terrible homosexualist' and, around this time, he became infatuated with Peter Watson, whose looks and charm he envied. Yet Manolo Blahnik is horrified that Beaton identified with such a man and Vickers reveals that Watson treated Beaton shabbily and later betrayed him with their mutual friend, Oliver Messel.

The heartbroken Beaton sought refuge in Hollywood and Blahnik swoons over his picture of Gary Cooper, while we also see portraits of Judy Garland, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich. But, just as he was getting his foot in the door, Beaton caused a scandal with some anti-Semitic details in an illustration for the February 1938 edition of Vogue that prompted Condé Nast to pulp the entire run. Beaton claimed not to know what the offending word he had used meant and pleaded to detesting Hitler. But Vickers avers that he gravely misjudged the situation and got above himself in seeking to shock and paid the price by being forced to resign.

Despite being largely ostracised for 18 months, Beaton received a phone call in July 1939 from a lady-in-waiting at Buckingham Palace asking him to photography Queen Elizabeth the next day. He wrote about his relief and excitement in his diary and V&A Photography curator Susanna Brown reveals that the first session with the queen posing with a parasol lasted over three hours. In all, Beaton would work with over 30 members of the Royal Family and somehow managed to stay in the good books of both the queen and her detested sister-in-law, the Duchess of Windsor.

During one session, Queen Elizabeth described the pink glow of the sky over Piccadilly and said she often felt like it was on fire. But her words proved prophetic, as the Blitz hit the capital during the Second World War and Beaton got a chance to do his bit as a combat photographer. The Imperial War Museum's Hilary Roberts explains how the Ministry of Information saw Beaton as an ideal person to record the bomb damage to help win the propaganda war in neutral America. Seeing this as a chance to redeem himself after the Vogue incident, Beaton took over 7000 photographs during the conflict and published eight books of images, while writing and drawing for magazine articles.

He later recalled that this commission had afforded him a marvellous opportunity to dig himself out of a rut. But Beaton took it very seriously, as he travelled to Burma, China and Egypt. Bowles opines that what set him apart from his peers was his eagerness to find beauty in extremis and Beaton noted in his diaries how the destruction he saw often resembled Surrealist paintings. Yet, as Bowles jokes, the crusade to depict defiance also had an eroticised tinge, as Beaton's eye for manliness is readily evident in his images of service personnel without being blatant.

Beaton found aircraft hangars more visual than film sets and hospitals more dramatic than stages. He photographed four year-old Eileen Dunne with her bandaged head clutching a toy and it made the cover of Life magazine on 22 September 1940 and changed many an American mind about the war against Fascism. Beaton himself survived a plane crash and frequent illness and Walker notes how the onetime foppish dandy proved to have a tough interior. As Beaton told Freeman, he was always willing to take on tasks that helped him become a better person.

With an unexploded bomb putting his London home at 8 Pelham Place off limits, Beaton took refuge at Ashcombe, only to learn that his landlord wanted to evict him. He was pained by the discovery of the last note that his brother Reggie had written before throwing himself under a Tube train in 1933 and the telegram announcing the death of a father who had been crushed by the blow. In 1948, Beaton moved across Wiltshire to Reddish House and remained there until 1980. He felt grown up here and Roberts recalls how the change of scenery coincided with a shift away from photography and into stage design.

Beaton began with John Gielgud's production of Lady Windermere's Fan at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, which brought colour back to postwar London. Taking cues from Diaghilev, he relied on taste to govern his choice and New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay suggests that he also took the essence of Anna Pavlova's elegance. He wishes he could have seen the 1936 production of Frederick Ashton's Apparitions, which marked Beaton's bow with the Royal Ballet and made daring use of violet and scarlet for the dresses.

Macaulay claims that Beaton's instincts were so good because he had been a dandy. He had informed Freeman that he was no longer self-conscious and restricted affectation to his hats. In a clip from Beaton By Bailey, Truman Capote marvels that Beaton could be vain and self-effacing at the same time. But Beaton denied having any vanity and interior designer Nicky Haslam opines that he spent his life trying to improve himself rather than preening on his laurels.

During the course of his cross-examination, Freeman had asked Beaton to name the most beautiful woman he had ever photographed and he had replied, Greta Garbo. Over a clip from George Fitzmaurice's Mata Hari (1931), he admits his obsession to his diary. But Garbo resisted his requests to sit for him until 1946 and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi insists that the resulting pictures rank among the most loving he ever took. However, their new-found closeness came to an abrupt end when Garbo cabled (after the spread had been printed) to insist that only one image appeared in Vogue and she felt sufficiently betrayed by Beaton to ostracise him for six months. Actress Leslie Caron is convinced that there was `hanky panky' between them, although actor Peter Eyre is less sure it went that far. Haslam suggests both were bisexual and felt they could `turn' the other and Beaton recorded a conversation in which he had once teased Garbo that they would have made a good married couple. However, she had given him a glare to suggest that she thought otherwise.

In addition to his diaries, Beaton also kept scrapbooks (150 diaries and 97 scrapbooks) and he chose one for his luxury item on Desert Island Discs. But he was forever restless and David Bailey jokes that his penchant for royalty had existed long before he photographed Queen Elizabeth II at her Coronation in 1953. Seated above the organ pipes at Westminster Abbey, Beaton had apparently secreted some sandwiches inside his top hat and had munched on them as he made the simple sketches of the ceremony that were published in a number of magazines. But it was the radiance he captured in his colour photographs of Her Majesty that did so much to sell the romance and glamour of the new reign. Yet, as Vickers, Bowles and Mizrahi testify, Beaton always felt unworthy of being in their company and exaggerated the sense of subservience that he adopted with his other celebrity sitters.

Beaton wrote 38 books during his lifetime and Mizrahi claims that The Glass of Fashion changed his life. Walker recalls getting a job in the Beaton Vogue archive and experiencing the thrill of seeing pictures of worthies like Coco Chanel, Marilyn Monroe, Sugar Ray Robinson, Marlon Brando, Cecil Day Lewis, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Francis Bacon and Aldous Huxley. He claims the nobility of Beaton's romanticism rubbed off on him, while David Hockney declares that Beaton taught him the value of portrait photography and Garner suggests that Beaton never recorded the world as he found it, as he always transformed it to conform to his vision.

In 1958, Beaton found himself in the position of being a kid in a sweet shop when MGM producer Arthur Freed gave him carte blanche on the sets and costumes of Vincente Minnelli's Gigi (1958). He confided in his diary that Leslie Caron was the textbook example of photogenicity, as the pop of a flashbulb transformed her from a frog into a princess. Beaton also worked on My Fair Lady and Bowles ticks off his seven year-old self for sniffily disapproving of the fact that he had given the Ascot ladies too much mascara. Yet, despite winning a brace of Academy Awards for transferring his stage vision to the screen, Beaton had informed Sheridan Morley that he had not enjoyed the filming process. Haslam confirms that Beaton had come to hate Hollywood, although a clip from Barry Norman's interview with George Cukor implies that it was tension on the set with the director that had spoilt the experience and it's clear that their mutual antipathy remained strong long after the cameras stopped rolling.

During the shoot, Beaton had escaped to San Francisco and promptly fallen in love with Kinmont Hoitsma, an American Olympic fencer he had met in a bar named the Tool Box (not that this is mentioned in the film, as such details are a little too gritty). Their romance lasted only a year before Hoitsma returned Stateside, although Vickers suggests that Beaton had an aversion to coupledom and had only dallied with Hoitsma because he made him feel young at a time when society was changing rapidly.

Former butler Ray Gurton declares that Beaton had an active a sex life, but had to be discreet as homosexual practices were still illegal in Britain. But Penelope Tree suggests that Beaton he was more dedicated to being a great artist than a lover. We see pictures of him with Gertrude Stein, Mova Bismarck and Diana Cooper and Vogue maven Diana Vreeland sings his praises as a loyal friend to Truman Capote, who applauds him for being a total self-creation. But they joke that Beaton also had a gift for gathering enemies like roses. He also smiles as he reveals his loathing of Evelyn Waugh to Freeman and puzzles in his diary why he detests Noel Coward so much while loving his work. Beaton also hated Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor for their crassness, vulgarity and ostentatious bad taste. He similarly lays into Katharine Hepburn for being a mottled piece of decaying matter whose lack of generosity and grace has turned her into a dried-up boot.

Beaton admits on camera that he excels at hating, even though he tries to convince himself that he is only fooling. But Eyre and Bailey recall a genius for rudeness and Tree admits that he could be hard to read, as he was a mass of contradictions. Roy Strong bluntly declares Beaton to be two-faced and impersonates him unctuously greeting a woman he had been badmouthing seconds before. Beaton admits to Freeman that he didn't always like the person he found in his diaries, but he didn't airbrush out the less flattering aspects of his personality. However, as Vickers notes, his revelation of the affair with Garbo offended her greatly, along with several others who felt that Beaton had not behaved as a gentleman by kissing and telling.

We see a clip from Beaton By Bailey of Bailey photographing Beaton snapping Penelope Tree in a verdant garden. But they disliked each other intensely and when Bailey is informed that Beaton had called his film `inconclusive and superficial', he cackles that those were the characteristics he had been striving to expose. Hockney was fonder of Beaton, however, and recalls him buying a painting for £40 that enabled him to go to America for the first time. Yet, over footage of Beaton snapping him, Hockney jokes that a Vogue assignment to sketch Beaton had taken an eternity to complete because they could never agree on what represented a good likeness.

Tree enthuses that she had no idea how Beaton got so much done, as he never seemed to stop. Over images of Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, the diary boasts of his stamina and an ability to outlast even the youngest friends at work or play. His parties were legendary and Hockney recalls meeting Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Mick Jagger, who had bumped into Beaton in Morocco. His diary entry marvels at his ugly beauty and feminine machismo and Bowles wonders how Beaton would have coped in the Instagram age and what his diary entry would have said about Kim Kardashian.

Gurton recalls his employer being happy pottering in the garden and we see him fussing over his white cat, Timothy. But Beaton was not one for idle retirement and we cut to a 1968 National Portrait Gallery Retrospective, as Strong reveals that this was the first major exhibition of a living photographer at the gallery and that it did them both the world of good. Another would follow in 2004. We see images of Dietrich, Merle Oberon, Pablo Picasso, Lillian Gish and Elizabeth II, as Beaton laments in an interview that he hadn't possessed greater intellectual depth.

As the new decade began, Beaton developed an admiration for Barbra Streisand while working with her on Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), which was released the same year that Julie Andrews presented him with a Tony Award for his contribution to the Broadway show, Coco. A year later, he curated Fashion: An Anthology at the V&A, while he was knighted in 1972, an award he considered to be `practically posthumous'. Yet he felt he needed to keep working hard just to stand still. Ultimately, however, he was halted by a stroke in 1974, as he never fully recovered the use of his right hand. Vickers reveals he was also depressed by a loss of elegance in the world and spent much of his later years fretting over his financial security.

In his diary Beaton grieved for lost youth and absent friends and wished that he could feel gratitude for what he had managed to fit in rather than sadness for what had gone forever. But Eyre ventures that Beaton was never entirely satisfied with what he had achieved and always felt that he could have done better. While writing his biography, Vickers had discovered a post-stroke diary and notes that Beaton had stopped writing after the 17 year-old Timothy had been put to sleep and Beaton had wondered whether he was the lucky one for being able to enter oblivion. A week later, on 18 January 1980, he died at Reddish House after getting flustered in the night. In his room were pictures of Watson, Garbo and Hoitsma.

As voices off sum up - with one surmising that Beaton would have resented dying because he hated missing anything - he concludes in his own diary that he had managed to stick to his goal of being daring and different and had fought to the end his battle against `the played-safers and the slaves of the ordinary'. This seems an ironic closing remark, however, as Immordino Vreeland rarely stray from the tried-and-trusted clips`n'quips format that served her so well on Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011) and Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (2015). Nevertheless, she and editor Bernadine Colish have done a fine job in compiling a portrait that does respectful justice to Beaton's artistic achievements and his marvellously busy life.

They also leave one wondering how Beaton would have felt about post-Warholian celebrity and how he would have dealt with the temptations offered by social media. Moreover, the film provides a timely reminder of how the film-makers of the future will be forced to mine Facebook and Twitter accounts (if they have not already been long deleted) for the kind of insightful acid drops that Beaton used to confide to his diary. What is particularly intriguing, however, is how Beaton was rescued from the oblivion caused by his anti-Semitic misstep by the Royal Family. One can scarcely imagine this happening today, with so many online trolls being ready to taint by association. But Beaton didn't simply rely on royal patronage to secure his rehabilitation and his wartime heroics probably deserve a film to themselves, as do the glorious monochrome photographs, which not only testify to Beaton's eye and aesthetic flair, but also to a lost era of style that passed with the Golden Age of Hollywood.

You have to be advancing in years to remember the time when Liverpool seemed to win everything. Two documentaries chart this period of Anfield dominance, with Stewart Sugg's Kenny following Mike Todd's Shankly: Nature's Fire in profiling a pair of Scots who became adopted Scousers thanks to their success on the pitch and their ability to tap into the spirit of a city that insists on dancing to its own tune. What unites the films is a sense of wounded pride that the club reinvented by Bill Shankly and taken to a new level by Kenny Dalglish has spent much of the last quarter of a century living on its former glories. But they also reveal the affection and gratitude that the red half of Merseyside retains for sporting titans who were also working-class heroes.

Its somewhat fitting that Todds study should begin with Mary Hopkin's `Those Were the Days' playing over shots of Liverpool fans and members of Bill Shankly's family boarding a coach to make a pilgrimage to Glenbuck, the lost Ayrshire mining village in which Shanks grew up and learnt the harsh lessons that would stand him in good stead in later life. His niece, Barbara, explains that he was the youngest boy in a family of 10, while football historian Billy Kay gives us a brief social history of Scottish mining and the influence that the egalitarian ethos of poet Robert Burns would have had on the community. Granddaughter Emma Parry admits this is the first time she has been to Glenbuck and Barbara looks at the land where the Auchenstilloch Cottages would have stood when the 15 year-old Shankly went down the mine and turned out for the Glenbuck Cherrypickers and Cronberry Eglinton.

In all, 50 professional players came from the Glenbuck area and biographer Stephen Kelly, journalist Hugh McIlvaney and author Irvine Welsh highlight the fact that football gave lads from impoverished backgrounds a chance to express themselves and make something of their lives. Moreover, the values honed underground gave the likes of Shankly, Jock Stein and Matt Busby (who were born within 30 miles of each other) the sense of teamwork that would make them great managers. It was no accident, therefore, that Shankly's brothers - Alec (Ayr United and Clyde), Jimmy (Sheffield United and Southend United), John (Portsmouth and Luton Town) and Bob (Alloa Athletic and Falkirk) - all played professional football, with Bob even winning the Scottish championship with Dundee and reaching the semi-finals of the European Cup in 1963, where they lost to the eventual winners, AC Milan.

These details are missing from the film, but they reinforce the sense of drive and ambition that the Shankly siblings nurtured in each other. They were also helped by the domestic style of close passing that allowed so many Scots to flourish in the English game. Following a season with Carlisle United, Shankly found himself at Preston North End for the princely sum of £500, where he developed a reputation as a tough-tackling right-half. Ex-Liverpool player and Preston fan Mark Lawrenson drops into Deepdale to reflect on Shankly's time with the Lilywhites, which saw him reach consecutive FA Cup Finals against Sunderland (1937) and Huddersfield Town (1938). In archive footage, Sir Tom Finney recalls what an effective player Shankly was and the fervour that the world's oldest knockout competition could then generate is evident from the clips of the open-top parade the Preston team enjoyed in 1938.

The Second World War interrupted Shankly's playing career, although he represented Scotland in a clutch of internationals while serving with the RAF. Four years after the war ended, Shanks decided to hang up his boots and take charge of Carlisle. Further managerial stints followed at Grimsby Town and Workington before Huddersfield boss Andy Beattie brought him to Leeds Road as his assistant. Among those on the playing staff was a young Denis Law, who remembers the new coach as being an effusive character who taught him everything he knew about football.

But broken promises over transfer funds saw Shankly accept an offer to join Liverpool in December 1959. The shots used to set the scene include one of the famous Overhead Railway, which was known as `the Docker's Umbrella' and which had closed three years before Shanks came to Merseyside. We also hear from comedian Ken Dodd declaring that Liverpool was anything but the dingy slum of prejudicial repute. Musician Peter Hooton takes us into The Sandon, the public house where Liverpool FC had been founded in 1892, and he, Steven Gerrard. Jamie Carragher and stadium announced George Sephton explain how much football means to the city and its sense of identity.

The club had been languishing in the old Second Division for some time and Sephton suggests that the board were happy to be a big fish in a small pond. But, even though he lost his first game 0-4 to Cardiff City, Shankly had bigger ambitions and he formed the famous Boot Room team with Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Reuben Bennett to ensure the players were fit and focused for every game. As fan John Morland recalls, Shankly transformed the training facilities at Melwood, while goalscoring legend Roger Hunt and right back Chris Lawler reflect on the fitness regimes that Shankly imposed to replicate the physical stresses and strains of a game.

Phil Aspinall (who put the lyrics of `A Liverbird Upon My Chest' to the theme of the 1968 John Wayne film, The Green Berets) remembers the effect of seeing the red shirts for the first time after his father had bought him a blue-and-white bobble hat while taking him to Goodison Park for a Liverpool Senior Cup tie against Everton. This amusing aside on the friendly tribalism that exists within the city goes some way to conveying the sense of reawakening pride that permeated the port in the early 1960s, as football and Merseybeat transformed its image. Broadcaster John Keith reflects this upsurge in When Shankly's Dream Came True, which sees him joined on the Epstein Theatre stage by Lawler, Ian Callaghan and Ian St John to mark the 50th anniversary of Liverpool's first FA Cup win in 1965.

St John had been bought from Motherwell shortly after Ron Yeats arrived from Dundee United and they formed a Scottish spine of the team with goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence. Shankly had persuaded board member Eric Sawyer that St John was key to the club's future success and Sephton recalls how the Kop based the chant for their new hero on `Let's Go', a minor hit by The Routers, which was one of the many songs that Liverpudlians had heard before anyone else in the country because the merchant seamen always returned home with suitcases full of American records.

Having won the Second Division in 1962 and the First Division championship two years later, Shankly adopted the now famous all-red kit and set his sights on the FA Cup, which Liverpool had never won. The final against Leeds United got off to a terrible start when Johnny Giles broke Gerry Byrne's collar bone. But, as this was a time before substitutes could be used, Byrne had to soldier on and the fact that Hunt and St John scored either side of a Billy Bremner goal in extra time made the victory all the more remarkable. Finally free of the Everton taunt that the Liver Bird would fly away from the Pier Head before Liverpool won the Cup, the fans took Shankly to their hearts.

As future skipper Phil Thompson avers, it could all have been so much better had the Reds not been cheated in the second leg of the European Cup semi-final in the San Siro by Spanish referee José María Ortiz de Mendíbil after a memorable 3-1 home win that began with Byrne and Gordon Milne parading the Cup in front of the Kop to whip up the atmosphere. Such a gambit typified Shankly's belief that the players and the fans were one unit and Paul Higgins confirms the strength of the bond, which owed much to Shankly's `man of the people' persona. Keith recalls that he had to pave over the front garden of his house in Bellefield Avenue because so many fans trampled over the lawn when coming to pay their respects. Granddaughter Karen Gill revisits the house and, as we see newsreel shots of the throng that greeted the team on 2 May 1965, it's clear how much the Cup win meant to the whole city.

Undaunted, Liverpool won the league again in 1966 (although there's no mention of the humbling 3-7 European Cup defeat to Johann Cryuff's Ajax) and the his ethos became more deeply ingrained at the club. As Hooton reveals at Glenbuck, the Spirit of Shankly group was formed to ensure that Liverpool FC retains its links with its core support in an era of corporate hospitality and inflated ticket prices that prevent the average fan from going to the games. Members Kieth Culvin and Roy Bentham opine that Shanks would be appalled by the way big money has taken the game away from the community and we flashback to the accompaniment of The Merseybeats singing `Our Day Will Come' to Lawler and Hunt remembering what an exciting place Liverpool was in the 1960s. The Kop are seen singing `She Loves You' in a famous clip from the BBC's Panorama programme, while Thompson and Howard Gayle (who became Liverpool's first black player) recall the adoption of the Gerry and the Pacemakers rendition of `You'll Never Walk Alone' as their anthem.

During a TV interview, Shankly commends the crowd for its natural enthusiasm and he was able to channel this fiercely partisan support into his players. But, as the decade came to an end, one or two stalwarts began to show signs of feeling the pace and Hunt jokily recalls earning himself a reprieve by urging Shanks to stand up to the directors who had questioned his form. Despite the pain of having to dispose of players who had served him so well, Shankly recognised the need to ring the changes and among the new crop were John Toshack, Ray Clemence, Steve Heighway and Kevin Keegan, who had been plucked from relative obscurity at Scunthorpe United and made an immediate impact after Shankly ordered him to run around and `drop hand grenades' all over the pitch. Forging a celebrated partnership with Toshack, Keegan quickly became a Kop idol and he recalls with considerable modesty how surprised he was by his meteoric rise, which was all down to Shankly recognising a kindred spirit.

Keegan was also impressed by how Shankly treated everyone employed by the club as a key component of the machine and this made players and tea ladies alike up their game. He drew on these sentiments outside St George's Hall after the 1971 FA Cup final defeat to Arsenal when he told the massed ranks that he had drummed it into the squad that they were privileged to play for such amazing fans. Thompson recalls how he saw the club as ambassadors for the community who had a duty to boost morale in tough times. Thus, he was delighted to be able to win the league and the UEFA Cup in 1973 before returning to Wembley to beat Newcastle United by 3-0 the following May. Yet, Shankly stunned the football world when he announced his retirement on 12 July 1974. Karen Gill alludes to the fact that he had been under pressure from his wife Nessie to call time on his career, but she also does stress how much Shankly came to regret his decision, as Bob Paisely took Liverpool to new heights, including the European Cup in 1977. Todd shows the classic clips from Tony Wilson's Granada Reports interviews with dumbfounded fans, while Keith, Keegan and Thompson conclude that the club handled the departure badly, as the board insisted on a clean break to prevent Shankly from being seen as a backseat driver. He tried to offer his services to other clubs, but got no takers and Hunt knows that he was hurt that his knowledge and experience were being spurned.

Interview extracts convey the pride that Shankly felt at having made the people happy and it's entirely fitting that this is carved into the plinth of his statue outside Anfield. Yet, while Paisley enjoyed even more success, he was a much more retiring character and was never adored by the fans in the same way as Shankly had been and still is. Emlyn Hughes recalls walking up to collect the European Cup in 1977 and thinking that Shankly had won this trophy by making Liverpool a powerhouse. But Shanks retained his distinctive brand of swaggering humility to the end and even stood on the Kop to watch a game against Coventry City in November 1975.

Lawler and Lawrenson remember the shock they felt at hearing of Shankly's death on 29 September 1981. Liverpool's next home game was against John Toshack's Swansea City and he wore a red shirt during the pre-match silence. The whole of Merseyside united to mourn the passing of an adopted son and Keegan recalls Nessie taking him to one side to return an award that Shankly had presented to his former No.7, only for Keegan to insist that the Boss deserved it more. Such small gestures testify to the greatness of the man and it's a shame that - prior the closing valedictions - the film somewhat clumsily cuts from footage of the funeral to the coach party singing `Shankly' to the tune of `Amazing Grace' being played by a lone piper. It's meant well, but it smacks of a schmaltz that has been laudably absent from this unashamedly nostalgic memoir.

Die-hard Koppites will be familiar with the Shankly story and some might lament the absence of some statistics to back up the accolades. But this is a fitting tribute to one of the great men of football, who fulfilled his promise to turn an unfashionable club into `a bastion of invincibility'. He once memorably declared: `Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.' This documentary may be a little bitty in its layout and short of shots of Shankly on the touchline exhorting his players on to bigger and better things (surely there was room, for example, for the hand gesturing from the bench at Wembley in what proved to be his last game in charge?). But Todd astutely reads between the lines of this much-quoted pronouncement and, in the process, succeeds in capturing the city, the club and the icon.

The loss of 96 Liverpool supporters in the Hillsborough Disaster forms a crucial part of a wider analysis of the impact of tragedy presented in Stewart Sugg's Kenny, as Kenny Dalglish had the misfortune to be in the dugout in Sheffield after having been on the pitch in Brussels four years earlier and in the stands in Glasgow in 1971, when 39 and 66 more fans lost their lives after leaving home to watch a football match.

Opening on 22 February 1991 with Kenny Dalglish's shock resignation as manager of Liverpool Football Club, Chapter One:, `When You Walk Through a Storm'', takes us back to 29 May 1985 when the Reds played Juventus in the final of the European Cup at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Fans were already aware that this was to be Joe Fagan's last game in charge and hopes were high that his all-conquering team would give him a rousing send-off. What they didn't know is that the board had already approached the team's iconic No.7 to be his successor.

Teammate Alan Hansen recalls wandering around the stadium in the shadow of the Atomium and being surprised to find a half-brick from the crumbling terraces on the pitch. Dalglish had also been concerned about the fact that a large contingent of Juventus fans had found their way into what was supposed to be a neutral zone between the two sets of supporters. Peter Hooton (the lead singer of The Farm and a ubiquitous figure in LFC documentaries) recalls that many in the Liverpool contingent feared that trouble would erupt and Phil Scrafton (the author of Hillsborough: The Truth) describes how a wall collapsed after a wave of Liverpool fans charged across the terracing.

Watching from the main stand, Marina Dalglish remembers hearing that there were casualties and John Barnes asks Dalglish and Hansen about how they felt about being made to play in the knowledge that people had lost their lives. Goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar remembers walking on to the pitch and seeing the evidence of carnage in one corner. Dalglish admits to playing in a daze because no one knew the full facts and it scarcely seemed to matter that Juve won 1-0 after the dubious award of a penalty for a trip outside the box on Zbigniew Boniek. As Barry Davies averred at the end of his BBC commentary, football didn't matter much in the face of such a tragedy.

Marina recalls going shopping the next day with a sense of shame and Scrafton reveals that Heysel had a dreadful impact on both the club (which was barred from all European competition for five years) and its following, as it had acquired a reputation for violence after previously being known for its good humour and banter. It was in this atmosphere that Dalglish took the reins as player-manager at the age of 34. But he was more concerned with the families of those who had lost loved ones and vowed to make the best of the hand he had been dealt.

As we learn in Chapter Two, `Walk On, Walk On', this steel was instilled in the young Kenny Dalglish by his parents in the East End of Glasgow in the 1950s. He returns to the family home in Dalmarnock to meet his sister, Carol, and they reminisce about their happy childhood. Dalglish was taught to kick a ball as soon as he could walk and he played after school with his pals and followed his father in supporting Rangers. Indeed, they had been in the crowd at the Old Firm game at Ibrox on 2 January 1971 when a late Colin Stein equaliser for the home team had caused to a surge of fans trying to get back into the ground around Stairway 13 and 66 fans were killed in the resulting crush. As Dalglish rightly says, there but for the grace of God went he. But what Sugg doesn't mention that the youngest fan to perish that day was a nine year-old Liverpudlian named Patrick Pickup, who was attending his first match with his stepfather.

Shortly afterwards, the Dalglish family moved to a block of flats overlooking the Rangers training ground. But, as Sir Alex Ferguson remembers, Sean Fallon, Jock Stein's assistant at Celtic, had been keeping tabs on his schoolboy progression and Dalglish had no hesitation in signing for the Parkhead club in May 1967 after Fallon had come to the house and left his wife and kids in the car for an hour while he negotiated a deal. Over a soft-focus reconstruction of the meeting, Dalglish remembers his father refusing to remove a photo of Rangers captain from the mantelpiece. But nothing is said about Celtic's European Cup triumph that spring or how Dalglish was able to bridge the religious divide that existed between the two clubs. Moreover, there's no mention of the fact that he had failed to impress fellow Scot Bill Shankly while on trial at Anfield the previous year.

But details are not Sugg's strong suit and he overlooks both the successful season-long loan that Dalglish had at Cumbernauld United and the stint he enjoyed in the Celtic reserve team that was so good it had earned the nickname `the Quality Street Gang'. However, Dalglish recalls Stein informing him that he would be making his debut against Hamilton Academical in the Scottish League Cup and jokes that Lisbon Lion Bobby Murdoch had noticed that he was so nervous that he had put his boots on the wrong feet.

Kenny and Marina go on a sentimental journey to the Glasgow they had known when they were courting. They pop in the Beechwood pub, where she had worked behind the bar while still at school. She recalls that Celtic players often used to drink in there and, after she teases him about the fact that he was always blushing, he snipes back that her father had warned him off her because she was a handful. As they recall their first date - the pictures and chips on a rainy Saturday - they get the giggles because she had been speculating about his car with a friend when he had walked up to the house after catching the bus.

If Marina and Kenny were a match made in heaven, so were Dalglish and Celtic. But a quick montage of TV clips and black-and-white photographs is all we get before Captain Kenny informs Stein that he wants to leave at the end of the 1976-77 season. Having just lost Kevin Keegan to Hamburg after Liverpool had won the European Cup for the first time, manager Bob Paisley had no qualms about splashing out a British record £440,000 to bring Dalglish to Merseyside and it proved to be one of the shrewdest investments in the club's history. Hooton and Scrafton recall the excitement felt on the Kop when Dalglish hit the ground running and they realised what a talent he was.

As football highlights were highly selective 40 years ago, not all of Dalglish's goals have been recorded for posterity. But there are some crackers in the montage that follows, as George Best proclaims Dalglish the best player in the country because he has so much time on the ball and sees things mere mortals miss. Among his most important goals was the winner in the 1978 European Cup Final against Bruges and he recalls how he gave away the Mini he had been awarded as the match winner to pay for a night out with the boys. As open-top bus parades were forbidden in Glasgow, he finally got to fulfil a dream and he comments on the generosity of the Everton fans who turned out to share in the city's moment of glory.

These were dark days for Merseyside and Ricky Tomlinson quotes from a letter that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received from Chancellor Geoffrey Howe about the option of imposing a policy of `managed decline' upon the region to stop wasting precious financial resources in a bid to make water flow uphill. Scrafton and Hooton concur that Liverpool FC raised the spirits of their downtrodden supporters and, as montage of civil unrest and glorious goals plays out, Dalglish and Hansen were well aware that the trophies they kept winning provided a light in the gloom.

At this point, Ian Rush joined Liverpool from Chester and took a good deal of ribbing from Dalglish while he found his feet. But they quickly formed a deadly partnership that often seemed almost telepathic and some of the goals shown here are simply sublime. They agree that the atmosphere in the dressing-room was key to the team's success, as everyone knew they were in it together, and a caption reels off the four European Cups, five league titles, four League Cups and one European Super Cup that Liverpool won between 1977-85.

But, as Chapter Three, `Hope in Your Heart', demonstrates, Dalglish took the team to new heights in the season that followed Heysel. As Hansen tells Barnes over a cuppa, he thought his friendship with Dalglish was going to end with his promotion. But they became closer, as Dalglish made Hansen captain and kept playing so that he had a foot in both camps. Things didn't start well, however, and Hansen confided in his pal that this was the worst Liverpool team he had played in. But Dalglish was confident that things would perk up if they could go on a winning run and it took them to the title, with Dalglish scoring the winner in a 0-1 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The team completed the double by beating Everton 3-1 in the FA Cup Final, with Rush scoring twice.

Off the pitch, Marina was surprised that Kenny took the manager's job, as he had promised to walk away from football after he finished playing. They meet up with daughters Lynsey, Lauren and Kelly and, over a takeaway, they agree that he could be difficult to live with, as he was often unhappy with the performance even when the team won. We see home movies of a family Christmas and the kids (including son Paul) complain that their father is always busy and Marina avers that there's no point bending the truth just because they are on camera. However, he reminds her that football is one of those jobs that it's impossible to escape because everyone is talking about it all of the time.

Teammate and friend Graeme Souness concurs that Dalglish could be an awkward customer with those he didn't know and trust and had a prickly relationship with the press. Hansen jokes that Dalglish thinks weakness is a weakness and did everything he could to present a show of strength. He also knew that tough decisions had to be taken for the good of the club and this earned him a reputation for being ruthless. His daughters suggests that he liked to play down his intelligence in public, but this was all part of a defence mechanism because he has always been as sharp as a tack. They enjoy watching footage of Eric Morecambe trying to translate Dalglish's speech at an awards ceremony and Sugg slips in the famous dressing-room clip when he pretends he can't understand what an English interviewer is saying. But, what is clear from this segment, is that the pressure on a manager is always greater than that on a player and the Dalglish family as a whole had to learn on the hoof how to cope with the change.

Following the Boot Room example of reshuffling the pack, Dalglish brought John Barnes, John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley to Anfield for the 1987-88 season and Barnes jokes about his part in `The Anfield Rap', which Australian midfielder Craig Johnson had penned prior to the Cup Final against Wimbledon. No mention is made of this blip in a campaign characterised by one-touch brilliance that included a 5-0 victory over Nottingham Forest that Preston North End legend Tom Finney described as the best performance he had ever seen.

Dalglish reckons that the reason that team was so successful was that everyone was good at their jobs and Sugg makes a digression to explore how it must have felt to be Paul Dalglish, who was a decent player, but not on a par with his father. He travels with Kenny and Marina to Ottawa, where Paul is coaching Ottawa Fury with Bruce Grobbelaar. Father and son are equally determined to win on the golf course and Kenny fails to remember a story Paul tells about reprimanding him for getting a red flash on a pair of custom-made boots. Paul also tells a story about Kenny lecturing a teenage pal's dad for congratulating his son on a good shot during a golf game. But Kenny insists that Paul would have learned nothing if everything had been handed to him on a plate.

As it is, he is proud of him trying to make a career in a sport where people accuse him of cashing in on a famous name. He also feels glad he has Grobbelaar to guide him, as he was a trusted teammate with whom he shared the nightmare of Hillsborough. But, as Chapter Four, `The Dark', begins, Paul reveals that he never speaks about the tragedy with his father, as he knows he has never recovered from the events of 15 April 1989 and their aftermath.

Driving to Sheffield, Dalglish recalls the preparations made for the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest and how optimistic he was about the game. He has never been back to Hillsborough and he parks on a hill overlooking the ground and the pain is etched on his face, as he declares in voiceover that nothing would make him set foot inside it again. Some have suggested that this is because he has failed to deal with his post-traumatic stress, but he knows his mind is made up.

BBC footage shows how the game continued for some time after it became clear that something was happening on the terracing behind Grobbelaar's goal. Kelly Cates remembers her mother shouting that this wasn't hooliganism, but an emergency and we see Dalglish stood on the touchline trying to see what was going on, as fans scrambled to safety and ambulances drove across the pitch. Aware that Paul was with his friends in that part of the ground, he had to balance his concern as a parent with his duty as the Liverpool manager. Thus, he had to address the fans over the tannoy to urge them to remain calm and the relief is palpable when he was reunited with Paul in the tunnel.

Unable to comprehend the grief of the families of the 96, Dalglish was determined that the club was going to do everything it could to support them. He reveals that he received a phone call from Kelvin McKenzie, the editor of The Sun, apologising for the tissue of lies he had printed under the headline, `The Truth'. But he had hung up on him when he declined to print a retraction. Instead, he made sure that players and officials attended the funerals of every victim and Scrafton declares that the burden that he and Marina took upon themselves was superhuman. Kelly suggests that he never dealt with his own feelings because he believed it was his job to remain steadfast for their sake and didn't feel entitled to the same concern.

Hansen recalls returning to Sheffield to see those in hospital and being asked by one mother to say goodbye to a 14 year-old son before his life support machine was switched off. He also remembers a father grieving for his 17 year-old when Anfield was opened up to the fans and he shrugs that nothing could prepare anyone for dealing with the agony of loss on this scale. Dalglish took Kelly and Paul to Anfield on the last day before the tributes were cleared. He reveals this was his first time on the Kop and he was deeply moved by the sense of community revealed in the messages. Paul remembers leaving his Celtic and Liverpool teddy bears and Dalglish chokes back tears as he thinks back on the realisation of how much Liverpool FC meant to the bereaved.

Five weeks later, the team rallied to beat Everton 3-2 in the Cup Final, with the returned Ian Rush again scoring twice. But Hillsborough continued to haunt Dalglish and we see home movies of Christmas 1990, as Marina claims that away from the limelight her husband was falling apart. Things came to a head during a 4-4 draw at Goodison Park in 5th Round FA Cup replay on 20 February 1991 when Dalglish realised that he no longer felt sufficiently in control to make decisions to change the course of a game. Two days later, he resigned.

Scrafton opines that only he can know the hell he endured during this period and this clearly isn't the time and place for him to reveal all. But Sugg opts to leap forward 27 years rather than explore how Dalglish rediscovered his love of football by steering Blackburn Rovers to the Premiership title in 1994-95 and, in the process, becoming only the fourth man in history (after Tom Watson, Herbert Chapman and Brian Clough) to win the league with two different clubs. He also ducks the difficult spells at Newcastle United and Celtic, as well as the mixed fortunes he enjoyed during a return to the Anfield hot seat following the sacking of Roy Hodgson in October 2010.

Instead, he comes right up to the present day in Chapter Five, `The Sweet Silver Song of the Lark', as the Justice for the 96 campaign finally pays off and Kenny and Marina were awarded the freedom of the city along with the victims they had done so much to commemorate. Mothers Jenni Hicks and Margaret Aspinall thank him for what he has done for them and echo Scrafton in emphasising the esteem in which they are held on Merseyside. He is also still beloved by the club, who renamed the Centenary Stand in his honour on 13 October 2017. As Gerry and the Pacemakers swell on the soundtrack and a final montage is intercut with this happy event, a closing caption reveals that Dalglish won 27 trophies during his 15 years at Anfield, including the club's last league title in 1990.

Since 2005, the Marina Dalglish Appeal has also raised £8 million for cancer research. In other words, if anyone deserves a knighthood, it's Kenny Dalglish. But, knowing him, he would much rather go about his business without the fuss. Long may he continue to do so, as he will always hold a special place in the hearts of Scousers everywhere.

This fittingly low-key tribute clearly has his blessing and Sugg and editor David Freemantle make a solid job of piecing together the superbly sourced archive material. As with Mike Todd's Shankly: Nature's Fire, there are flaws and omissions. But the films share an understanding of their subjects and an appreciation of the duo's standing with Koppites. Although he treads carefully in assessing the personal legacy of Hillsborough, Sugg deserves credit for touching on the impact that Dalglish's suffering in silence had on his wife and kids. From the charming scenes of family cosiness, it's clear the worst has long passed. But this thoughtful documentary reminds us that King Kenny should be cherished for much more than his prowess on a football field.