Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep’ on HBO Max, A One-Man Stage Show Starring The Longtime NFL Personality

Terry Bradshaw’s been on television for more than fifty years, first as the four-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and later as one of the NFL’s most popular pregame commentators. In the new HBO Max special Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep, we get to see him like we’ve never quite seen him before–cracking jokes, sure, but also storytelling, reminiscing, and even singing a few songs. It’s a different look at one of the sports world’s most familiar faces.

TERRY BRADSHAW: GOING DEEP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Every Sunday from September to February, you can turn on your television and see Terry Bradshaw cracking jokes and talking football. In August 2021, though, the NFL Hall of Famer took the stage at Branson, Missouri’s Clay Cooper theater for a four-night run of performances: part comedy show, part concert, part one-man theatrical performance and part confessional. The voice is familiar, and the tone largely is, too, but it veers into something different, and offers a surprisingly interesting spin on the athlete-documentary genre.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: In one sense, this is a pretty straightforward concert film, reminiscent of countless comedy or musical specials, with multi-camera shots of a live performance. In another sense, it’s an athlete vanity documentary akin to Tom Brady: Man In The Arena or Russell Westbrook: Passion Play. It’s exceptionally rare to find a film that’s both, though, and Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep is unique in that right.

Performance Worth Watching: Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep is, by design, a one-man show, so of course Bradshaw’s the star. But let’s save some applause for one audience member–a borderline doppelganger of the quarterback–for cracking a few impromptu jokes of his own after being pulled on stage for a bit.

Memorable Dialogue: “Hey man, you from Iowa?”, Bradshaw inquires of an audience member who’s cheered at his mention of the state. “Whaddya think of this electricity?”, he deadpans, gesturing to the indoor lighting, to peals of laughter from the crowd. This exchange is fairly representative of the country-vaudeville kind of humor that his live show trades in. Later, reminiscing on the legendary “Immaculate Reception” touchdown by teammate Franco Harris, Bradshaw recalls, “When I hit the ground and heard the roar of the crowd… I gotta be honest with you, folks, I knew… endorsements were about to come my way.”

Sex and Skin: Listen, this is nothing personal against Terry Bradshaw, but I think even he would understand that I am relieved to report there is no nudity in this.

Our Take: Terry Bradshaw’s been playing a character for more than half a century. From the very beginning, he was sold to football fans as a clueless hick, a “dumb blonde” quarterback who couldn’t find his car after the game. As Dallas Cowboys linebacker “Hollywood” Henderson famously noted before Super Bowl XIII, Bradshaw “couldn’t spell ‘cat’ if you spotted him the ‘c’ and the ‘a’.” The image of a slow-talking southerner slinging passes in the Steel City while flies buzzed around inside his head stuck, but Bradshaw was a star either in spite of it or because of it, winning four Super Bowls in the 1970s.

After retiring, Bradshaw parlayed this persona into a longtime television career, trading in the same kind of blunt, backslapping blue-collar folksiness that made the late John Madden a legend. It’s the kind of career many of his former teammates and rivals would envy, and it’s the kind of career that someone as dumb as Terry Bradshaw–the character–wouldn’t have been able to pull off.

Every famous athlete is playing a character to one degree or another; we think we know these people as they’re beamed into our living rooms every weekend, but in reality we only know a public persona, one that’s often crafted as a protective shell around the real person. Building a career like the one Terry Bradshaw has built often means turning yourself into a cartoon, a caricature of the person you actually are.

It’s clear that Bradshaw harbors some resentment about being saddled with this image, even as he knows it’s made him accessible to viewers, and that duality is on full display in Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep. The show deftly edits together concert footage from his four-night Branson stand with archival game footage and the more traditional athlete-doc confessional interview clips. No single element of the mixture is especially unique, but the interplay reveals something surprisingly poignant. In one shot, Bradshaw’s pulling off Borscht-belt one-liners, and in the next he’s reflecting on whether he truly loved his first wife or his battles with clinical depression. It’s more vulnerable than you might expect going in, and it’s surprisingly effective at humanizing someone we already thought we knew.

To be honest, the singing? It’s not great. Bradshaw actually recorded a series of country and gospel albums in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so he’s not a novice, but The Last Waltz or Springsteen on Broadway this isn’t; it’s the kind of singing you might expect at a theater in Branson, Missouri. That’s ultimately not the point of Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep, though. It’s a variety show with a deeper soul, and it pumps some new life into the tired world of athlete bio-docs.

Our Call: STREAM IT. “Terry Bradshaw’s variety show” might not sound like the most appealing sales pitch, but Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep turns the athlete bio-doc genre–one that’s been dying for something different–on its head in a surprisingly effective way.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.