‘Kelce,’ ‘Wrexham’ and ‘Wrestlers’ add to the wave of sports-related documentaries

By Brian Lowry, CNN

(CNN) — Sports is just another form of TV content, and networks and streaming services have eagerly sought to stretch that out over more hours. So it’s hardly a surprise to see the drama spilling off the fields, courts and mats and into docuseries and documentaries, focusing not just on the games people play but the people who play them.

This week, that brings the Amazon documentary “Kelce,” a profile of NFL lineman Jason Kelce; a new season of “Welcome to Wrexham,” the Ryan Reynolds/Rob McElhenney-produced docuseries about the soccer team they bought; and the sports-adjacent “Wrestlers,” which looks at the owners and participants in a small wrestling operation, which mixes acting and athletics, given all those body slams and falls.

They join a host of recent documentaries humanizing well-known sports figures, such as Netflix’s “Quarterback,” which followed a trio of signal callers over the course of a season; Apple TV+’s excellent “Stephen Curry: Underrated,” about the NBA star; and a docuseries that captures the hunt to make it in big-time basketball, “One Shot: Overtime Elite,” which examines the pressure on youths participating in that relatively new enterprise designed to showcase teens with an eye on making it in the NBA.

For well-known athletes like Kelce the appeal is clear, with the former spending much of the documentary debating when he should retire and what life might look like after football, in the midst of a season that followed the Philadelphia Eagle through his Super Bowl showdown with his brother, Travis, of the Kansas City Chiefs.

By contrast, “One Shot” catches its young players at a pivotal moment in their careers, focusing primarily on twins Amen and Ausar Thompson, who made history by becoming the first brother tandem selected in the first 10 picks (they went No. 4 and 5, respectively) of the NBA draft.

That hunger for success is also captured somewhat differently in “BS High,” a recent HBO documentary about a bogus high-school football enterprise that garnered attention when it somehow found its way into a televised game on ESPN in 2021, losing in such spectacular fashion to football powerhouse IMG Academy as to prompt an investigation into what Bishop Sycamore High really was and how this happened.

Although the scripted-programming spigot hasn’t dried up yet, with the writers and actors strikes dragging on, don’t be surprised if there’s more sports-related programming. But for now, here’s a quick breakdown of recent options:

“Kelce” (Amazon’s Prime Video, September 12)

An amusing part of the documentary focuses on how that brother-v.-brother matchup temporarily threw their mother, Donna, into the center of the media universe.

At its core, though, is the question of the toll football imposes on players, with Jason Kelce noting that he’s undergone seven surgeries in 12 seasons, leaving him in bad shape for a 35-year-old guy with two kids and a then-pregnant wife. Thinking about his health in terms of being around for his family, he says, “I play a position where I hit my head on every single play.”

“Welcome to Wrexham” (FX/Hulu, September 12)

Commercially speaking, the pitch “A real-life ‘Ted Lasso’” plus the value of Reynolds’ social-media following was surely a no-brainer.

As constructed, the show splits its time among the team, the local fans and the celebrity owners, remaining a bit of a slog, despite its whimsical tone, for anyone who has trouble getting overly excited about the various tiers of English football and mechanics of promotion.

“Wrestlers” (Netflix, September 13)

The focus here is on Ohio Valley Wrestling of Louisville, Kentucky, a small operation that produced such future stars as John Cena and Dave Bautista. But the seven-episode series finds the operation struggling, as its longtime leader and mastermind, Al Snow, chafes against interference and financial pressures from the new owners, which include local radio personality Matt Jones.

“Wrestlers,” not surprisingly, is as much about show business as sports, even if the famously fake and plotted antics of professional wrestling are presented as another form of entertainment content. The wrestlers, meanwhile, dream of breakthroughs despite the long odds against reaching the big time, enduring the physical punishment and occasional indignities that go with the gig.

“One Shot: Overtime Elite” (Prime Video)

Although much of the sizzle here comes from the Thompson twins, this six-part series also looks at other kids who won’t hear their names called on draft day, a reminder that this is a Darwinian process, where only the privileged few make it to the next level.

It also offers a savvy peek behind the curtain at other requirements of the job, such as watching the twins grudgingly underdo media training to prepare for interactions with reporters in their future, all part of what league general manager Damien Wilkins calls “a huge responsibility to put on a young man.”

“BS High” (HBO/Max)

A truly strange story, the HBO documentary focuses on the mastermind behind the titular “school,” Roy Johnson, who at one point asks his interviewer, “Do I look like a con artist?”

Directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, the project nicely details how Johnson exploited the existing system surrounding big-money high-school sports, and how something subsequently labeled a “scam” by the Ohio Department of Education could operate so brazenly. While there are almost comical aspects to that, “BS High” also addresses the collateral damage to young players who knew something was fishy but persevered, seeing their involvement as a potential path to playing college football.

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