The sports docuseries The Dynasty: New England Patriots continues to astonish viewers, earning its 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating by telling the story of the most polarizing NFL dynasty of the current millennium. The latest episode (available with an Apple TV+ subscription) honed in on the rise and crime-filled fall of Aaron Hernandez, but the series' creative team took a different route with that material than past projects have.
It's inevitable that the latest Patriots documentary was going to cover the arrest, trial, and eventual death of Aaron Hernandez, but The Dynasty: New England Patriots tackled it in a way that stood out from what the public has seen before. Director Matt Hamachek explained to CinemaBlend why he and and the project's producers decided to have the players themselves share their experiences with and memories about Hernandez, as opposed to an emotionless recounting of the legal details surrounding his first-degree murder charges. According to Hamachek:
It was really important for us to tell it from the perspective of the people that were there. And what we realized as we talked to the people that were in the building was that this wasn't a true crime story. This wasn't salacious; this wasn't, you know, all of those things. This is a person that they cared deeply about. And I think that really comes through in the episode, and to handle that with a lot of care is something that these guys really talked about.
The Dynasty: New England Patriots doesn't sugarcoat the crimes or try to gloss over the damage that was done, but it features candid interviews with the athletes and staffers who worked alongside Aaron Hernandez at the time of his arrest. The result paints a picture of what was going on with the player in the days winding down to his eventual imprisonment, and highlights many of their overall shocked reactionsover one of the most promising Patriots having completely extinguished his NFL dream.
Because of that approach, the Apple TV+ series doesn't go as in-depth as the documentary Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, which revealed a lot about Aaron Hernandez's darker side, including some disputed claims about his sexuality, but that wasn't ever the point of this particular project. The Dynasty: New England Patriots is about covering the franchise in total, from that first Super Bowl win to the latest one, with a focus on every player, coaching staffer and exec who was a part of it.
As such, the show spends less time trying to answer the question of Brady vs. Belichick and instead honors and celebrates the community of people who came together to create a dominant franchise over two decades. While I've seen some fans criticizing the lack of talk about the actual events of NFL seasons as opposed to controversies, I think the docuseries has a grasp on what a bulk of viewers want to know the most about.
Those who still haven't had a chance to check out The Dynasty: New England Patriots should do so and tune in for new episodes of the ten-part series on Fridays. Once that's done, it may be good to check out our list of best 30 For 30 documentaries, just in case sports fans are hungry for even more.
