The dear old International Championship - as Ned Van Esbeck used to call it - has been given the Netflix treatment. Frankly, one wishes it was around back in the amateur era. A behind the scenes documentary of Ireland's 1987 World Cup campaign would have been quite hilarious. ["Of course, there was no Netflix back in them days," one of the old-timers will surely remind us in his next after-dinner speech.]
Rugby Union's marketing people have never been wary of bombast, with every big international match portrayed as akin to the First Day of the Somme, except with a higher attrition rate.
Needless to say, the producers lean heavily on the shuddering physicality of their product. The sound effects department lay it on thick, every tackle is accompanied by a thunderous clap and probably registers somewhere on the Richter scale. Slow-motion is deployed whenever a player lunges over the try line.
Every such Netflix deal is an attempt to replicate the success of 'Drive to Survive', which revived the previously flagging interest in Formula 1 in this part of the world. While not on a par with the 'How did the Jordans fare?' era, F1 briefly became all the rage again in 2021, with Netflix taking a fair chunk of the credit [along with a proper championship race, of course]. Godspeed to the makers in their quest to get anything interesting out of the most recent season.
A glut of similar shows followed. Break Point [about tennis players], Full Swing [about golfers], Quarterback [about quarterbacks].
Netflix's golf show spent a lot of time walking viewers through the ABCs for the benefit of the uninitiated - "the biggest tournaments are the four majors... these are the events all the top guys want to win".
There's some of that here also, Andy Farrell telling us at one stage that the Grand Slam is when you win all five games; Steve Borthwick informing the viewer that "the fly-half is the conductor of the team".
No one who watches the series will be left in any doubt as to Ireland's world ranking at the time of filming. Our status as World No 1 is alluded to roughly every six minutes, either by the opposition coach or by Ugo Monye - the latter so ubiquitous, he effectively serves as the show's unofficial narrator.
How they reached No 1 in the world is left opaque. The words New Zealand and South Africa are conspicuous by their absence throughout the entire series. The Guinness Six Nations is an enclosed world here, nothing outside of it exists in rugby union. At the end, one gets the impression that Johnny Sexton's career finished on an unqualified high, a storybook finale.
Producers of any future series might have cause to regret that the team who won the Grand Slam were also probably the tightest with the access. Andrew Porter is at the heart of episode three, Farrell and Sexton sat down for interviews at the back end of the series. Otherwise, we just get a snippet of their familiar deep breathing exercise in Rome and some snatches of the dressing room around the England game.
They certainly have cause to regret Kieran Crowley's sacking as Italy head coach, which looked a tad harsh before the World Cup at least. The Italians went full bore with the access and Crowley let it all hang out.
He was happy to be mic'd up in the coaching booth, which allowed us to hear him brand the officials "f****n' cheats" during their deeply upsetting home loss to Wales. He even gave us a John O'Mahony style 'There's no only one f****n' answer for that' rant, while reviewing the papers ahead of the Ireland game.
A few more seasons and he could have well become the Guenther Steiner of 'Full Contact'. Calling up Gene from the Italian Federation telling him that all his out-halves are crocked.
Indeed, we could see the beginnings of a Netflix curse, with so many of the featured players not around this year - Dupont, Hogg Rees Zammit, Farrell, Sexton.
The Scots are also flathulach with the access, in keeping with their freewheeling reputation. We get to see them slurping beer from the Calcutta Cup and witness their team announcement ahead of the Ireland game at Murrayfield, where we learn that these things are done on powerpoint now rather than read off a sheet by the coach.
One feels a rare pang of sympathy for the likes of Stuart Hogg, who yearns for a Six Nations title victory more than anything. This is obviously in stark contrast to the prevailing attitude in Ireland, where the national team's many haters have somehow mainstreamed the idea that the competition is Mickey Mouse - a notion that would have seemed both bizarre and highly presumptuous prior to 2009.
In an effort to combat the Haskell-ist, rah-rah-rah stereotype of their rugby players, the English sections zone in on two perceived outliers. Out-half Marcus Smith, with his Filipino underwear beneath his shorts and Ellis Genge, who recounted his hard-knock upbringing.
In the French team meetings, Shaun Edwards bilingual briefings are reminiscent of Ronan O'Gara. "Kick the f*****g ball. Stop f*****g about in our half," he declares at one point, returning to Anglaise.
'Full Contact' piggbybacks on a well-worn formula. Overall, it lacks the rancour and the spite that characterised Drive to Survive and is badly undermined by the ostentatious mutual respect displayed by all the participants.
Most of the behind-the-scenes footage is wholesome, with nothing that would cause any of the Unions' PR execs to phone up someone in Netflix to shout at them.
The treatment of England's humiliating loss to France is typical. A more warts and all approach might have shown us some blood on the floor in the Twickenham home dressing room. But instead, a veil was drawn and all we got was the French coaching staff chuffed with themselves and life in general.
The golf series, in particular, suffered from the lack of an overarching narrative akin to a World Championship and simply turned into a series of biographical portraits, built around their season's highlight - or lowlight in the case of Brooks Koepka.
The rugby series does at least have the narrative arc provided by a championship at the end, though, alas, the 2023 season wasn't an especially dramatic installment. Compared to the previous two, Ireland's third Grand Slam of the 21st century was a procession.
We see the French dressing room watching the Grand Slam finale in Dublin but there was comparatively little tension. Documentary footage of the besuited England team in Rome back in 2014, wincing in distress when France's last-minute try was chalked off, handing Ireland the Six Nations title, would have been a far more welcome crescendo.
There is the suspicion that these shows work better for viewers clueless about the sport in question. Thus, over the course of a half hour, Drive to Survive can convince this viewer that Lando Norris finishing 'P5' rather than 'P6' in Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying is the be all and end all. That this is a seismic achievement and it's all sunlit uplands for Lando from now on. A seasoned F1 aficionado might be in a stronger position to call bulls**t.
Similarly, the hardcore rugby fan won't be left reeling by anything they see in 'Full Contact'.
