Full Contact stops well shy of warts and all treatment

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,