Netflix’s The Playbook Season One Early Review

Sports are universal. Even those who don’t love watching sport can get swept in the euphoria of their team winning. Today, while in the middle of a pandemic, sports are a much-needed distraction in a bleak and depressing world. Sports are an escape that also finds a way to bleed into our own everyday lives. Netflix’s new docu-series The Playbook explores this theme by taking notable coaches across a wide range of sports and having them draw parallels between their lives and their various ideologies that have led to their winning mentality.

The premise for The Playbook is a simple one. Hearing such names as Doc Rivers (coach of the LA Clippers), Jill Ellis (coach of the USWNT), José Mourinho (manager of the Tottenham Spurs), Patrick Mouratoglou (Serena Williams’ coach) and Dawn Stalley (coach of the University of South Carolina’s Women’s Basketball Team) share their life experiences and how they built a winning foundations within their professional lives is interesting but this docu-series lives or dies with these figures. All of them are charismatic people in that one could feel every word that comes out of their mouths. This docu-series easily would not have worked without the subjects and the creators knew this, putting their presence front and center.

The standout episodes of The Playbook were those that dived into stories that were both deep and personal, be it Doc Rivers sharing his experience with racism as a black man in America, or Jill Ellis’ struggles with her sexuality, or Dawn Stalley who was tasked to build a winning culture from the ground up, coming into a predominately white school as a black woman. 

The Playbook doesn’t try to do too much, foregoing drama in favor of simply letting their subjects do the talking. Their accomplishments and stories about their lives were ripe of compelling little gems, so much so that it could have just been them talking without footage, graphics, or other fancy bells and whistles. These are people that have such interesting stories to tell that cutting away to various footage didn’t always work or bring anything new or interesting to the table other than melodrama about time which was unnecessary. But on the other side, it is easy to understand why the creators chose to do so as having someone talk to the camera for an hour in and of itself may not necessarily be appealing to some viewers, however, the subjects here were such excellent storytellers that they were enjoyable to watch anyway.

At the end of the day, The Playbook doesn’t try to change the game in terms of docu-series but rather conducts interviews revolving around how one applies one’s professional experiences onto their personal lives. It may not be as wild or out there as Tiger King or as shocking as Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich but it is still something that sports fans will connect with on a deeper level.

still courtesy of Netflix

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Guest Writer