10 Best TV Episodes Of 2021
8. Dark Side Of The Ring - "The Plane Ride From Hell"
With all the shady goings-on that plague the world of professional wrestling, it’s surprising it took this long for a serious documentary to be commissioned on the matter, but we can be glad it was tackled by someone willing to take such a deep and detailed look at a medium so often dismissed.
Sports entertainment fandom isn’t a prerequisite to enjoy the show, though some of the more emotionally charged episodes work better if you have some knowledge going in. Its finest episode didn’t profile an unsung or misunderstood hero, though, but instead told the full story of an anecdote often chucked out as a “boys will be boys” laugh.
In 2002 the WWE roster boarded a plane back to the USA from Britain. With hours to kill, the wrestlers took full advantage of the free flowing booze, and in no time things went deeply awry. While some of the behaviour was merely embarrassing, some of the men took part in altogether more unseemly acts.
Wrestling veteran Ric Flair comes off the worst by far here, with the sloshed Nature Boy allegedly sexually assaulting air hostesses, whose stories are given plenty of time here. It’s illuminating and deeply depressing stuff, as Dark Side Of The Ring so often is.