Movies you might have missed: One Night in Turin, a documentary about England's chance at Italia '90

With rare archive footage and a soundtrack of period classics, this is essential viewing for anyone daring to dream England might just relive those glory days

Paul Gascoigne in 'One Night in Turin'

World Cup fever has gripped the nation for the first time in decades after England’s excellent start to the tournament in Russia. The ironic suggestion that “It’s coming home” suddenly doesn’t seem all that frivolous as the English revel in a young, exciting team seemingly devoid of cliques.

The most successful England team on foreign soil was Bobby Robson’s 1990 side, the subject of All Played Out, the remarkable eye-witness account of that remarkable summer that might just be the best book ever written about sport. In 2010, James Erskine adapted that seminal text into One Night in Turin (available on Amazon Video), a remarkably faithful documentary.

The football landscape of the time is almost unrecognisable and Erskine wisely opts to dispense with any modern interviews to add context but instead use solely archive footage. Like the book on which it is based, One Night in Turin aims to emulate the feeling of living through Italia ’90 from the perspective of an England football supporter while giving a sense of the wider issues affecting the country at the latter end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Astonishingly, much of the opening footage of the poll tax riots was never shown on British TV as it was deemed too violent.

Narrated by Gary Oldman, this is a story of heroic defeat centred around one of the most beloved sporting figures in the nation’s history: Bobby Robson. As Paul Gascoigne cries at the film’s denouement, Robson tells him, “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, this is your first”, and the poignancy is almost unbearable knowing that Gascoigne would never play at another World Cup and Robson, a warm and gregarious individual, is no longer with us.

That match against West Germany was watched in Britain by 26 million viewers, at that time the record number of viewers for any previous sporting event. Football, bloody hell.

Erskine sticks closely to the narrative of Davies’s book since there is no need to artificially inject excitement into a story this compelling. The issue of hooliganism and Thatcher’s absurd proposal to stop the England team travelling to Italy are addressed but at its heart this is the story of a football team that captivated the nation in a way no team has done since.

With rare footage and a soundtrack comprised of period classics, this is essential viewing for anyone who is daring to dream and thinks England might just relive those glory days over the next few weeks.