Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Dynasty: New England Patriots’ on Apple TV+, a 10-Part Documentary Look at the Tom Brady / Bill Belichick Relationship (and Rivalry)

19 consecutive winning seasons. 9 Super Bowl appearances. Six rings. A slew of league records, and a place in the history books as one of the greatest dynasties in any sport. The two-decade collaboration between quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick has long been fertile ground for sports documentarians, and now Apple TV+ is taking their turn with The Dynasty: New England Patriots, a ten-part look back at the era that was.

THE DYNASTY: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Adam Viniateri lines up a field goal attempt, and pretty much any NFL fan knows which field goal–the (spoiler: successful) 47-yard kick that sealed the Patriots’ win over the heavily-favored St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, a shocking upset that set one of sports’ greatest dynasties in motion. This highlight quickly cuts to a montage of criticism of the Pats following the ‘Deflategate’ scandal of 2015, demonstrating quickly to viewers that this dynasty is, in fact, a land of contrasts. (This montage concludes with a positively Wagnerian remix of Queen’s “Under Pressure” that is meant to underscore the drama of it all but comes off, quite frankly, as hilarious.)

The Gist: If you’re a sports fan, you already know the storyline here. A head coach without great success in his previous job. A lightly-regarded quarterback thrown into the fire unexpectedly. A miracle run to a championship, and then a two-decade run of success that followed. It’s basically the first five Rocky movies in sequence. Here, we get a full, slickly-produced look at that story as it unfolded, with full buy-in from all of the major characters (and a delightful selection of the minor characters), too.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There isn’t a sports documentary that’s come out since 2020 that hasn’t tried, to some degree or another, to capture the magic that was the Jordan-era Bulls documentary The Last Dance, but that comparison is especially apt here. The question really is, how does this one stack up against Tom Brady: Man In The Arena, ESPN’s nine-part documentary on the subject from 2021?

Our Take: The New England Patriots–that is, the Patriots of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick–have been labeled as a dynasty at least since 2004, when they won their third Super Bowl in four years. That dynasty lasted far longer than anyone could’ve reasonably imagined, resulting in three more wins over the next fourteen years. Even as Tom Brady left for Tampa and the Patriots faded out of the league’s top echelon, it’s been hard to picture the era as actually over.

Well, two things have happened in the past month-plus that signal a genuine sense of finality to the era. First, the Patriots parted ways with Bill Belichick after 24 seasons, severing the last link to the team’s greatest glories. Second, the Kansas City Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in five years, guaranteeing that a generation of children will think of Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce (and Taylor Swift) when they think “football dynasty”. The Patriots dynasty, as it was, finally belongs to the ages.

It’s in this light that Apple TV+ is dropping The Dynasty: New England Patriots, a fresh 10-part documentary look at the nineteen-season collaboration between Brady, Belichick and owner Robert Kraft.

There’s full buy-in from the major figures–Brady, Belichick, longtime Patriots owner Robert Kraft; this isn’t any unauthorized biography, and runs the risk that all such sports documentaries run of becoming little more than a legacy-burnishing exercise. It doesn’t fully escape that trap, but it’s rescued largely by the presence of non-Brady/Belichick figures, players like linebacker David Nugent and cornerback Ty Law, who excel when given the chance to tell their part of the story. (Law’s especially entertaining, lamenting giving Brady a deal on buying his first condominium: “Tom owes me $150,000!”).

The documentary doesn’t rush into the story–the first episode is dedicated almost entirely to the drama surrounding Drew Bledsoe’s injury and Tom Brady’s taking over of the Patriots’ starting QB role, not even getting to the end of the team’s first championship season. As such, it definitely suffers from a bit of bloat. (Not everything has to be a ten-part series, I swear.) Still, it’s comforting, well-crafted off-season sports content, a perfectly nice thing to spend your time with if you’ve got the time to spend. As a Cleveland native, I appreciated an extended segment contrasting the Bledsoe/Brady drama with Belichick’s earlier decision as Browns head coach to bench Cleveland legend Bernie Kosar, something I’m still not entirely over three decades later.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The Patriots lose a midseason game to the St. Louis Rams, and criticism swells of Belichick’s decision to stick with the untested Brady over the now-medically-cleared-to-play Drew Bledsoe, with fans furious and owner Kraft expressing that he felt Belichick was making a mistake. “Bill and I, we were under pressure. And the decisions that we were about to make were going to determine the future of football in New England for the next twenty years.” The rest, as they say, is history. (And nine more episodes.)

Sleeper Star: Amid the hagiography of Brady, Belichick and Kraft, the presence of Drew Bledsoe in the first episode is refreshing. Bledsoe, of course, factors into the story primarily as the established quarterback whose injury in 2001 thrust a sixth-round draft pick into the starting role that he wouldn’t relinquish for nearly twenty years. Bledsoe was a darn good quarterback in his own right, though, and deserves to be recognized as something other than just the Wally Pipp to Brady’s Lou Gehrig. Hearing him talk about his injury–and his surprise at not being able to return to his role once cleared to play again–is among the most compelling pieces of interview work here.

Most Pilot-y Line: “That team lived long enough, and won enough, to become the villain,” one commentator notes in discussing the legacy-tarnishing Deflategate scandal, echoing Harvey Dent/Two-Face’s famous line from The Dark Knight.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If the prospect of an offseason without football’s too much to bear, and you aren’t sick to death of hearing about the New England Patriots, The Dynasty: New England Patriots is a good football story told well, and it takes the time to examine threads that go beyond Foxborough.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.