Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • A23

News in Focus EVENING STANDARD WEDNESDAY 22 JANUARY 2020 23 pyramid routines to fearsome super-coach Monica Aldama, Phoebe Luckhurst tells you how to get in formation suspected concussion and many have ankles taped up or a bionic cast. Time and again, the team struggles to assemble itself into a pyramid the Holy Grail of cheer; be watching from between splayed and sweating palms. The cast, too, are a contradiction, a mixture of drive and vulnerability. There is emo cheerleader Lexi, a high- school dropout for whom cheerleading is the second chance she expect. I have cheer be sitting in a jail cell right says Marshall in the intoxicating opening five minutes.

care about anything or anyone. Without inscrutable, reserved a cocked eyebrow counts as a strong reaction. She studies every routine for errors. very she says dryly, the understatement echoing. Need a mantra for 2020? Try Would Monica She might be a harsh taskmaster but the team are loyal: proof that pressure works.

Convinced yet? also copious Americana porn aficionados will delight that most famous export besides cheerleading is a fruitcake made in its homespun neighbour- hood bakery. You will also, surely, become obsessed with Gabi Butler, a one-woman cheerleading superbrand, the ultimate cheerlebrity, with almost a million followers on Instagram and a career the rest of the team dream, obsessively, about. There are delicious one-liners, like assessment of aptitude people are just not as talented as other people. just and the time that Lexi sneers that the professional cheerleaders who perform at the games of NFL team The Dallas Cowboys are dancers. stuff we do is much more Will they go all the way to the top? Bring it on.

someone takes a tumble and lands on the floor, the team wordlessly falls into a routine of 50 push-ups: This is not a democracy, a cheerocracy and Aldama is the ultimate cheer-tator. She does not suffer fools or falls gladly. ER putdowns are withering. you want it to look she asks her team, eyebrow arched, mouth set. Because times won and been like, I really want to watch that You can hear the hearts of 40 cheerleaders breaking.

The woman can make her signature greeting, sound menacing. She has a uniform (thigh-high boots, skinny jeans, a white shirt): a certain sign that too busy to make any unnecessary decisions in the morning. Not that a harridan some washed-up old cheerleader with a fetish for masochism. No, she is simply formidable, exacting, a winner. At one point, she had designs on a career in finance; brought the big-dick energy of Wall Street to a gymnasium in small-town Texas.

She films every sequence, clutching an iPad in her French-manicured fingers, watching through narrowed eyes. She is cheerleading it would have been over for Morgan is fragile, tiny, obsessive about her weight; Jerry has struggled with his weight his whole life, explaining that growing up, the only food his family could afford was fast food. Indeed, there is a persistent class narrative that underpins the show. The team operates as a sanctuary albeit a refuge where you might end up training with tampons stuffed up your bleeding nose after being kicked in the face by a team-mate. And all the while being observed surveyed by Monica Aldama, a Rita Wilson lookalike who is hands-down the best part of the whole series.

Aldama is the coach, introduced to viewers with a montage rather reminiscent of how Regina George is first presented on screen in Mean Girls. These Boots Are Made For purrs in the background as acolytes line up to pay their respects. says one admirer; meticulous, coos another. want to be pants yet another. Aldama is Corsicana- born and raised a former high-school cheerleader, with a business degree from the University of Texas who devised the programme that has taken Navarro to the top 14 times.

When Need a 2020 mantra? Try Would Monica a hard taskmaster, but the team are loyal All stars: the Navarro College team, left. Above right, practising aerial formations.