Common Sense Media Review
By Marty Brown
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Wrestling docuseries features drugs, stylized violence.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Wrestlers
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
Wrestlers focuses on Ohio Valley Wrestling, a school for aspiring professional wrestlers that operates sort of like a farm system for the big names like WWE and AEW. Despite its legacy and local popularity, OVW loses money at every show. Wrestlers documents the tension between the school's investors and its entertainers.
Is It Any Good?
In true streaming era fashion, this docuseries is eerily similar to another recent show. Unlike Apple TV's Monster Factory, Wrestlers appears to have support from big-name wrestling brands like AEW and WWE. This allows them to show archival footage (like the classic Wrestlemania III match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant) and put the sport into wider context. But it also means there's less focus on the craft and the grind of wrestling, which are the very things that make Monster Factory so compelling. Instead, Wrestlers is padded with clips of its stars sitting in meetings or completing mundane tasks like counting money from a cash register; hour-long episodes easily could have been 30 minutes. There are too-brief moments of excitement, particularly when the wrestlers are actually, you know, wrestling, but mostly Wrestlers fails to make those showdowns into the main event.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the world of professional wrestling. What drew you to this documentary series? How did it change or inform your perception of wrestling?
Why do the characters in Wrestlers love wrestling? What drives them? What are their goals? How do they go about achieving those goals?
How does Wrestlers portray the business side of wrestling? What conflicts are there between the management and the wrestlers? How do these get resolved?
TV Details
- Premiere date : September 13, 2023
- Cast : Al Snow
- Network : Netflix
- Genre : Reality TV
- TV rating :
- Last updated : September 26, 2023
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