Lockdown Recommendations: Watch

We’re a dozen days into lockdown, and you may have exhausted some of your go-to entertainment options. The SportsFreak crew have got you covered with suggestions from across the sporting world to help kill some time.

WATCH

Sunderland Til I Die (Season 1) – @KloppGoff

Someone once said to legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly that “football is a matter of life and death to you.” He replied “Listen, it’s more important than that!” For many football fans, this rings true. In this docuseries we get fly-on-the-wall access to Sunderland for their 2017/18 season. Having just been relegated from the Premier League, there are high expectations around the club and fanbase that promotion will be immediate. Throughout the eight episodes, we ride the rollercoaster of emotions with some of the club’s most ardent fans; we see how cut-throat the football world is for players and staff; we find out just how greedy some footballers can be and how poorly the club was run by an owner that was so desperate to sell and get out.

Icarus – @NewYorkNixon

Film maker Bryan Fogel sets about making a documentary exploring doping in cycling, wondering if he can use drugs to improve his amateur results. By chance, he happens upon a major international doping scandal involving Grigory Rodchenkov, head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory.

 

The Damned United – @girvana

The Damned United is the story of a new coach trying to bring in a new culture to a stubborn but successful team. As you would expect from the BBC the acting is first rate. Not only for Leeds or Derby County fans but for all sports fans in general. This is not a spoiler – it’s the ultimate revenge movie too.

 

Comeback Season: Sport After 9/11 – @HDiddyNZ
ESPN put together this moving feature to coincide with a special exhibit at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in 2018. Talking with survivors, families of victims, first responders as well as politicians, athletes and sports administrators, the doco captures the spirit and importance of sport to help get a grieving nation back on its feet. Perhaps some similar factors will be at play as sport returns following this current pandemic.

 

Crossing the Line – @MadMaclegend

South Africa’s SuperSport looks back at the tumultuous and spiteful 2018 Australian cricket tour, where the quality of the cricket took second stage to the acrimonious relationship between the two sides.

Australia’s first Test win, spearheaded by Mitchell Starc is overshadowed by the stoush in the stairwell at tea on Day 4 between David Warner and the Protea’s Quintin de Kock and fine levied against Nathan Lyon, while in the second the matchwinning efforts of AB de Villiers and Kasigo Rabada play out in parallel to the latter’s ‘bump’ on Australian captain Steve Smith when dismissing him in the first innings. That set the stage for the third Test in Cape Town where the Australians would hurtle at warp speed towards their so-called ‘line’, and Smith, Warner, and Cameron Bancroft would earn their places in cricketing ignominy.

Warning – contains plenty of Shane Warne’s reckons

LISTEN and READ to come