For the Lions tour unlike any other, it's fitting the documentary that follows is suitably unique.
For starters, this isn't the usual feature-length one-and-done documentary that has followed previous tours - starting with the superlative Living with the Lions that chronicled the 1997 tour. Instead, it takes the form of a three-parter.
In South Africa, those three episodes aired weekly. When it is broadcast on ITV from Sunday night, it will be nightly - aired over three consecutive nights.
Read more: Lions tour 2021 documentary to finally air in UK this weekend
The other novelty for this series is, as the title Two Sides suggests, it's not just pulling the curtains back on the tourists, but the hosts as well. For the first time, we see into the Springbok camp.
And, while this series doesn't have the same humour as those earlier documentaries, that decision alone to look at both sides breathes life into a concept which, in recent outings, had become a bit stale. This format, coupled with the drama that unfolded due to the unprecedented challenges of Covid-19, makes for interesting, if slightly different, viewing.
If the original documentary was borne out of the amateur era, with what followed simply trying to recapture that magic, then this one certainly feels like the first properly tailored for the professional era.
There's no clips of kangaroo courts or raucous drinking sessions. Instead, there's moments of genuine intensity and high stakes mixed with family features that only serve to illuminate the sacrifices it takes to be on a Lions tour.
"We're going to win the f*****g tour," Warren Gatland says enthusiastically before the journey has begun. "The challenge is about us fronting up physically, about us seeking those sorts of challenges, about expectations that we have in this squad about winning the series."
There are nice pieces with Josh Adams' partner and Liam Williams' family and friends, with the former elaborating on the birth of daughter Lottie that became a plotline throughout the tour. The latter is interspersed with an interview with the mother of Springbok centre Lukhanyo Am, demonstrating the varied paths both have taken to the top.
However, perhaps the most revealing part of the first episode is simply how close the plug was to being pulled on the whole tour.
With Covid having ripped through their squad, Director of rugby Rassie Erasmus said at one stage the players and management held a meeting with SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux where they felt they couldn't go ahead with the tour.
"Then we basically gave up," Erasmus says. "I called the players together and said: 'Guys, I'm going to call these guys and say the tour's off... if we've got stay here again and miss that SA A game. We would basically have played one match against Georgia'.
"I'm going to f*****g phone Jurie now and ask him, because we can't do it man. We're playing in two days' time."
There's little insights into a fraught Zoom call between Lions and Springbok management over the future of the tour, with Gatland revealing "he (Rassie) was saying his players were going to walk out of the squad".
Obviously, a resolution was found, but it's fascinating to see just how dramatic some of these moments were. So too the effect of positive Covid tests in camp.
While it certainly seemed dramatic last year when players were dropping out of squads at the last minute, the reality of the situation in camp didn't always shine through. It does here, especially with the Boks.
We get a closer look into what quarantining in their rooms looked like weeks out from their biggest Test series in over a decade. Assistant coach Mzwandile Stick calls it the "closest thing [to] being in jail".
The first episode builds to the Lions' sobering defeat to South Africa 'A', made up largely of Springbok stars. It is, of course, the game that set the Test series up nicely and there's nice, little moments of dressing room talk that hint at what's to come.
"Boys, they are s**t scared," declares Erasmus.
In the Lions huddle, stand-in captain Conor Murray gives his own impassioned speech. "They'll f*****g go away if we f*****g attack them in the first 10 minutes, yeah? They won't want to f*****g know about it.
"We f*****g go violent in that f*****g breakdown."
The end of the first episode is something reminiscent of a Bond film. Having seen tour captain Alun Wyn Jones a broken man after his seemingly tour-ending injury against Japan, with one shot just lingering on a solitary Jones with his head in his one good hand after requesting to be alone, the episode ends with news reports on his startling recovery.
And then, a simple shot of the Wales lock letting out a grin. Not a bad way to end an episode.
With the return of Jones and Rassiegate, there's more than enough for this documentary to get its teeth into in episodes two and three.
- 'Two Sides', produced by Whisper and T + W, will be shown on Sunday 19 June (10.20pm BST); Monday 20 June (10.45pm); and Tuesday 21 June (10.45pm) on ITV1
