How do you remember The Last Dance? The ten-part docuseries quickly became a phenomenon when ESPN released it in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bob Fescoe thinks the timing was kind, and it shouldn’t be something networks and streamers look to as a model for sports documentaries.
Fescoe and Josh Klingler discussed HBO’s recently announced Barry Bonds documentary Thursday morning on 610 Sports Radio in Kansas City. Fescoe dismissed the project as unlikely to tell any true stories about Bonds’s association with performance-enhancing drugs. He added that he isn’t sure this is a story that deserves the multi-part documentary treatment in fact, most sports stories are not.
“I’m not doing this because it’s not going to resonate,” he said. “But the other thing is, too, everybody thinks we have a space in our lives for more of The Last Dance. The Last Dance came out when we were all being captive with masks on and couldn’t see others. And it was the only new thing on TV and it was the only sports-related thing going on.”
The duo took turns naming documentary series that got considerably more time than they needed to tell the story. ESPN’s multi-part Derek Jeter retrospective The Captain was named as was the new 30 for 30 about the 1980s show American Gladiators.
In announcing the Bonds project, HBO acknowledged that Bonds himself is not involved, but the network is leaving the door open for him. Klingler questioned if that was a good idea for creating an entertaining, honest documentary.
“Do you want him to be fully on board?” Klingler asked before lobbing another criticism at The Last Dance. “It can skew the truth. Certainly put it in question like The Last Dance. Right?”
Fescoe wondered if anyone greenlighting these projects has taken a critical look at what made The Last Dance the phenomenon it was in 2020. He isn’t sure it was as entertaining or as anticipated as the ratings may suggest. Networks don’t seem to consider that.
“I firmly believe that if people had somewhere to go, even the grocery store, they would not have consumed The Last Dance. Not to that extent,” he said. “But because we had nowhere to go and we weren’t allowed to walk amongst the living, we were there. We were a captive audience.”
