I am a huge rugby fan and though I'm English, the All Blacks are my second team. They are a magnificent outfit and are perennially outstanding. I didn't expect much from this show, mostly I expected it'd feel cheesy and over dramatised. In truth it wasn't like that at all. It felt really rather honest and cut to the heart of what rugby 'feels like'. For anyone not already enamoured with the sport, or completely new to it, this would be a great introduction. It gives a great taste of the culture and camaraderie and explains some of the basics in a very digestible format. It's also exciting and gives an accurate flavour of the dichotomy inherent in a superstar team that, intrinsically, is very down-to-earth. It's not outstanding tele but is very good.
I felt it could have used a little bit of extra footage for some of the games, specifically the regular broadcast footage as the higher viewing angles would have made the patterns of play clearer. I imagine this was a licensing issue. The pitch level footage is great and a nice counterpoint to what we usually see, but for a novice rugby viewer it might have made things harder to interpret.
Anyway, hats off to the production team and hats off to the All Blacks, amazing effort all around.
