2025 Show
United Kingdom · English, Spanish
A conventionally made sports doc series bolstered by thrilling rugby footage
More a recounting of the matches and key moments of the 2023 Six Nations season (albeit from a more personal point of view) than a more analytical documentary series, Full Contact nevertheless delivers where it matters most. By never privileging one team’s experience over another, the series establishes a different set of stakes for every match, and helps even non-rugby fans get the gist of what each national team was working towards or against during their respective runs. This is still a show that should hold more value for rugby diehards than casual viewers, of course, but it should be a reasonable enough diversion for anybody curious.
Round by round, match by match, the best rugby teams in Europe battle it out to take home the trophy in the Guinness Six Nations Championship.
A documentary series following each of the teams that competed at the 2023 Six Nations Championship in rugby.
What makes the rugby footage in Full Contact so exciting—even for those who might already know these matches like the back of their hand—is ultimately the editing. There's an impressive amount of coverage at this show's disposal, and it really milks the drama from every play with a combination of wides, aerial shots, crowd reactions, and close-ups of players either sprinting down the field or having their faces pushed into the dirt. It's all incredibly intense and certainly much better than a simple replay of archival footage taken from a broadcast.
Rugby truly is a four-dimensional sport—just by watching it you can feel pain in your body and smell testosterone in the air.
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.