A six-part documentary follows the NFL team through its most recent season—in which it made it to the Super Bowl for the third year in a row—and delivers an in-depth history of the organization.

By John Anderson Aug. 12, 2025 5:32 pm ET – Wall Street Journal

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Travis Kelce Photo: ESPN

Purely as televised entertainment, the National Football League is probably best watched these days courtesy of something like “The Kingdom.” The series is much more than a six-episode highlights film; it will be catnip for devotees of the Kansas City Chiefs, the sport’s second craziest fan base (see: Philadelphia Eagles). But its mainstream appeal may be as a way of watching professional football free of the dithering that turns an estimated 15 minutes of action into a three-hour presentation.

What the series can’t sidestep is sports-TV politics. A reader may want to consult, for further illumination, the recent Holman W. Jenkins Jr. column on the new NFL-ESPN deal, which further relegates “conflict of interest” onto the American vernacular dustheap. But the fact that the show arrives on the eve of ESPN’s new streaming service suggests the story was going to be told one way or another, given the popularity and prominence of the Chiefs and that they therefore might attract viewers to the platform. Which does not, at all, make it less interesting as TV nonfiction. It simply provides a motive.

“It’s a blessing to be going to work today,” the very blessed Kareem Hunt tells director Kristen Lappas (“Full Court Press”), as the Kansas City running back drives to a winter practice at Arrowhead Stadium. “Thirty teams aren’t going to work today.” And no team ever faced the same challenge: being in a position to win the Super Bowl three times in a row.

That they don’t is something “The Kingdom” makes clear right off, while turning a potentially unhappy ending into a virtue: The team agreed to do the documentary about the organization and its history “win or lose.” Noble. (Coach Andy Reid said in a recent interview that team owner Clark Hunt wanted to do it, so he played ball.) Chiefs haters, of which there are many, will appreciate the “lose” section of the program, especially in Philadelphia, whose Eagles won 40-22.

Andy Reid, the Chiefs’ head coach. Photo: ESPN

But the Chiefs are singular in ways that make them a better subject than, say, the Cleveland Browns. Or the New York Jets. For one thing, they generally win. Also, members of “the Kingdom,” which usually refers to the fans as well as the team, think of the whole thing as a family business. Which it is. As we are told at rather fascinating length, Clark Hunt’s father, Lamar, founded the Chiefs, helped found the American Football League, and as a scion of the Hunt family oil business could fulfill his destiny as a sports visionary. Aside from one franchise in Los Angeles and another in San Francisco, the infant NFL was an easterly enterprise. A great mass of the Midwest was underserved, as the elder Hunt saw it. And he was right.

In addition to the archive of Chiefs memorabilia stored 150 feet underground (in the Lamar Hunt-built cave complex known as SubTropolis), the series-worthy aspects of the Kansas City Chiefs are its characters. Everyone around him seems to regard Mr. Reid with affection, and he’s intelligent enough to be himself on the field and on camera. Patrick Mahomes, the extraordinarily gifted quarterback, treats every interview like a ball he needs to scurry into the end zone as quickly as possible; he answers every question with articulate breathlessness. Travis Kelce is far more relaxed, though it probably hasn’t hurt that he’s been exposed to Taylor Swift-level media pressure for the past two years. Along with Clark Hunt, the people who make up the Chiefs squad and staff—among them the much-lauded general manager, Brett Veach—are a likable group, not the least being Kareem Hunt, who was brought back to the team when Isiah Pacheco was injured last year; he had been released in 2018 after an altercation, a denial that he was involved and a video showing he was. He seems repentant. Sports stories are often redemption tales of one sort or another. His is one, though a Super Bowl victory might have made it sweeter.

The Kingdom

Begins Thursday, 9 p.m., ESPN

Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.