How to make your sports documentary stand out, when there seems to be a new show revisiting an incredible competitive achievement every week? Disney’s new four-parter is about a motor racing team coming from nowhere to vie for the sport’s biggest prize, and its choice of presenter comes from nowhere too: it’s Keanu Reeves! The show has something unique to turbo-charge its word-of-mouth appeal. Have you seen Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story? You know, the Keanu Reeves one.
Reeves, who emerges from darkness at the start of each episode with cinematic grandeur, but is a puppyish amateur when interviewing sportspeople, is a distracting but not destructive presence as the impossible story of the title is told. In the 2009 Formula One motor racing season, the unfancied Honda team was to be run by notoriously wily pit boss Ross Brawn and suave, capable CEO Nick Fry. But they were threatened with not being able to take part when, in the aftermath of the global financial crash, Honda scrapped its F1 operation. Brawn and Fry effected a management buyout, purchasing the team for £1 and re-emerging as a new outfit, Brawn GP.
