Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Boys in Blue’ on Showtime, a Heartbreaking Docuseries Following Football at a Violence-Plagued High School

Boys in Blue, a new four-part documentary miniseries on Showtime, follows a high school football team chasing a state championship, but this isn’t Friday Night Lights. This is North Community High School in Minneapolis, a school in a neighborhood plagued by violence, whose players struggle to stay safe and out of trouble. Their 2021 season plays out against the fallout from the nearby murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the wave of protests that ensued.

BOYS IN BLUE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Players stream into the locker room at Minneapolis’s North Community High School, as a chorus of their voices plays over still shots of their faces. “Why does everything have to happen when I get into high school? First COVID, then all these protests… I gotta tell myself I can’t get caught up in all of this… I was looking for another family, a team to call my family, and I found it… being in the streets has never really been an option… I just gotta make sure I ain’t around all that.”

The Gist: The 2020 murder of George Floyd–and the protests and violence that engulfed the city in the aftermath–shed light on a side of Minneapolis far away from the gleaming facade of the Minnesota Vikings’ stadium downtown. At North Community High School, football is a chance to steer clear of the ever-present violence that surrounds the school. While a nationwide discussion erupts over policing, many of the North High coaches are also police officers, making this story more complex and difficult to tell well. Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg takes the helm here, telling a story of hope against danger and despair.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The most painfully obvious parallel is Friday Night Lights, both in subject matter and in the presence of director Peter Berg. But this story is real life, and there’s no happy ending to be found here.

Our Take: Boys In Blue is a small-scale story–one about a football team and a high school–but one that can’t be taken apart from what happened in Minneapolis and the country in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. “The tension in North Minneapolis with police and the community is intense,” head coach Charles Adams reflects, “but I honestly had no idea things would unfold the way they did. My city and my neighborhood was destroyed.”

It’s against this backdrop that the 2021 season for the North Community High School Polar Bears takes place, with players striving for a championship while working to stay away from the violence all around them. In an early scene in the first episode, members of the coaching staff lament the state of things in a barbershop discussion, despairing that the situation for the kids they’re charged with leading is much worse than it was for them growing up.

Importantly, the kids are given a chance to tell their own story, with on-screen interviews with many of the players, including Demeiko “Meiko” Anderson, Jr., Mario “Rio” Sanders, Cashmere “Cash” Grunau, Tae-Zhan “Tae” Gilchrist and quarterback Deshaun “D-Hill” Hill. They recount the things they’ve had to deal with, including violent interactions with police, incarcerated parents, and narrowly escaping shootings themselves.Despite the circumstances they’ve been forced to deal with, these young men are still kids at heart–Sanders reflects on being a senior now, and how it feels like he was just in sixth grade.

North Community High School is a predominantly Black school, and one that principal Mauri Friestleben describes as “unapologetically Black,” a haven for the young people living in this troubled part of the city. “We embrace it. You’ll hear me refer to North as the dopest, Blackest school in the state of Minnesota. We thrive in it and we get life from it. I think of the kids not just as their principal, but also from a mom’s perspective. Whatever happened on the way here, you are welcome here, and this space is yours and you are safe here and you are loved here. We’re not burning nothing down. We’re only lifting you up.”

“Being an African-American man in the world now is very, very dangerous,” Gilchrist notes, reflecting on the dangers he perceives in interacting with police. This is the most complex drama underlying Boys In Blue, with much of the coaching staff drawn from the police ranks. “We can’t let the bad prosper, the bad cops. We can’t let them win,” reflects Tim Lawrence, a white police officer and offensive line coach for the Bears.

It’s a difficult story to tell, but Berg is experienced in telling a football story with many different layers. This isn’t fiction like Friday Night Lights, but manages to do the story justice, no small task for any filmmaker. It’s a fine line to walk–this could easily become either a defund-the-police story or image-burnishing copaganda, but Boys In Blue avoids falling into either trap. It’s a nuanced story, and Berg lets the people involved do all the talking.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The coaching staff assumes their role as police, with coaches Plunkett, Adams and Lawrence seen away from the locker room and doing their jobs in uniform. “We’re going to have to work to build trust after George Floyd’s death, but there’s always been a tension between law enforcement and our community,” Adams notes. “There’s shitty cops out there, I’ll be the first to admit it,” Lawrence shares. “But you can’t let the bad cops… you can’t let them win.” The first episode ends with a shot of Plunkett staring at the camera in full uniform, as he asks in voiceover: “Before you judge anything about me, get to know me.”

Sleeper Star: The two most compelling figures in the story are Deshaun “D-Hill” Hill, the Polar Bears’ star quarterback, a bright and talented young man leading his team while working hard to steer clear of the danger around him, and head coach (and former police officer) Charles Adams, charged with helping these young men not just stay safe, but thrive.

Memorable Dialogue: “The hardest part for me is him going to the bus stop, catching the bus to school, going to the corner store, ‘cause I don’t know if it’s the last time I’m going to see him,” Hill’s mother reflects. “It’s that bad around here. I pretty much take him and his friends wherever they need to go, because I don’t want them to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s my fear.” This statement would prove sadly prophetic, as Hill was murdered shortly after the documentary wrapped production.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Boys In Blue isn’t an easy watch by any means, but it’s an important story worth telling, and the filmmakers walk a careful tightrope in telling it right.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky who publishes the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.