Summary
Youth programmes work, and We Are: The Brooklyn Saints demonstrates a close-knit and an up close documentary approach.
Netflix’s We Are: The Brooklyn Saints season 1 was released on the streaming service on January 29, 2021.
With Last Chance U relieving their football duties and moving to basketball, Netflix needed a documentary series to keep giving audiences that fix. We Are: The Brooklyn Saints is different. There’s more focus on kindness and the importance of sowing the seeds. While the other series focuses on college football and young adults having the desperation to make it to the top despite their adversities, this documentary series follows a youth football program in the depths of inner-city East New York, Brooklyn — it’s geared towards boys ages 7-13.
It’s a little bit like when Gordon Ramsay heckles and shouts at his chefs in Hells Kitchen, plunging adults into despair, but when he does a junior version of his series, he brings a comforting approach, bringing warm-heartedness as a way to ensure he can get the best out of his children. We Are: The Brooklyn Saints season 1 presents kids in similar backgrounds — this is a vehicle of opportunity for them. This is an environment that could make them.
But on the other hand, a loss is not a loss — each moment and situation is a win; it’s a chance to learn, mature, and develop, and the Netflix series does well to get those themes across. The documentary series takes its time to get to know the kids and their influential adults, it brings a full, wholesome picture to how this youth program works.
