Kiwi caddy features on Tiger doco
Tiger
Neon, from Friday
Earl Woods seemed to know from the time his son was in diapers that he’d be the subject of a three-hour sports documentary one day, and that this documentary was going to need plenty of archival footage. So, there he is, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, smashing a cleaner drive than most of us will ever hit in our lives, even though he’s less than 1000 days old.
As with last year’s Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance, you don’t need to be a golf nut to be captivated by the story of the rise and fall of the world’s greatest golfer, told over two feature-length parts in the HBO special, Tiger.
The first half charts his rise, from appearing on The Bob Hope Show as a 2-year-old putting prodigy to winning back-to-back-to-back US Amateur Championships as a teenager; from the height of Tigermania to the point things began to turn with the death of his father in 2006.
Earl is pretty much the main character of part one — with no input from Tiger or his family, the documentary gets a lot of mileage from Earl’s old TV interviews, of which there were many.
He was evangelical about the effect his son would have on not just golf but the world — quite a lot of pressure for someone to carry their whole life.
Probably the person closest to Tiger interviewed here is his old Kiwi caddie, Steve Williams, who offers insights into the obsession with the game and the mind games Woods used to destroy his opponents within it. But the biggest drawcard doesn’t arrive until the very end of part one — Rachel Uchitel, the woman at the centre of the Tiger’s infamous 2009 sex scandal, in the first interview she’s done about it. “Oh hi,” she says sitting down in front of the camera, “so what do you want me to talk about?”
WORTH WATCHING
Lupin Netflix
When it comes to things we love, even though they’re technically crimes, it’s hard to go past an audacious heist. If you can pull one off without getting caught, you pretty much deserve to reap the rewards and if you can fold in an element of revenge against a family of wealthy villains, you’re really on to a winner. That’s the basic formula for the entertaining new French series Lupin, about a janitor at the Louvre (Omar Sy) pinching an expensive necklace. That’s really just the start of it, though — the twists and turns and revealing flashbacks galore from there.
The Stand
Amazon Prime Video
The latest Stephen King adaptation, based on his 1978 novel about the postapocalyptic aftermath of a deadly global virus, finished filming in March 2020, just as a real-life deadly virus was shutting down the world. The influenza here is man-made and even worse, killing billions in its first week, and the fate of humanity lies in the hands of Whoopi Goldberg as the 108-year-old saviour Mother Abigail.
At 1152 pages, the unabridged version of The Stand is King’s longest novel — as always, a miniseries version is bound to disappoint some fans of the book, but it’s still worth watching all the same.
The Good Lord Bird Neon and Soho
The tag line on the promo material for The Good Lord Bird is “All of this is true. Most of it happened.”
Which seems like a pretty good mantra for any historical drama, really. This one’s been adapted from James Mcbride’s 2013 novel by Ethan Hawke, who plays John Brown, a (real) abolitionist in 1850s Kansas. He and his crew of slaveryabolishing soldiers are joined by the (fictional) young boy Henry Shackleford (Joshua Caleb Johnson) for a series of darkly comic escapades that eventually end up with their instigating the American Civil War.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Juliet, Naked Netflix
Don’t worry about the title, this is totally fine to watch with your children and/or parents — the only awkward thing about it is how relatable you might find the two emotionally immature men at its centre and/or the woman who loves them both. Based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name, Juliet, Naked stars Ethan Hawke as Tucker Crowe, a 90s alt rock enigma who accidentally becomes penpals with the dissatisfied wife (Rose Byrne) of his online fan club boss (Chris O’dowd). If you’re sceptical about how accurately it portrays 90s alt rock (and the men who love it), be assured by the fact it’s directed by the bassist from The Lemonheads.