How TV shows are changing the way we see sport Sports dramas, biographical stories and the culture of the "unspoken"

With the main professional leagues of the world stopped due to the pandemic, the phase that should have brought the sport to be told through a new communication style has undergone a sharp acceleration: in the absence of an event/match that can be conveyed through mainstream media, the sports series are the reference product in a very particular historical context.

The message came loud and clear when ESPN and Netflix decided to anticipate the release of ''The Last Dance'': at a time when traditional storytelling has no reason to exist, we might as well anticipate the times and offer the public a taste of what will be in the near future.

A "hard and pure" realism that Netflix successfully replicated in "Last Chance U" - in which the vicissitudes of the players of the East Mississippi Community College are told, taking up the themes of the occasion and too high expectations of players and coaches - and from which he diverged, with mixed fortunes, in "The English Game" in which the anecdotes told through the staging dominate rather than the historical accuracy and completeness.

Waiting to understand how and how much ''The Last Dance'' will change the way of understanding and narrating sport beyond sport, the idea is that the series of this type must continue on the path of a genuine narrative without filters or distortions on the ''branded content oriented'' line, to try to bridge the distance that separates them from less innovative products but more adherent to the reality they intend to tell.