The Last Dance Review

In the autumn of 1997 an NBA Entertainment crew was given the run of the Chicago Bulls for what everyone expected to be the dynasty's final season, and the more than 500 hours it shot could only be used with Michael Jordan's permission, which he withheld until 2016. Jason Hehir makes that season the spine and cuts back from it through Chapel Hill, the beatings from Detroit, the first retirement and the year of minor league baseball, so every episode runs two stories at once. The editing is the achievement.

The interviews are the pleasure. Whenever a rival or teammate says something Jordan might dispute, Hehir hands him an iPad to watch it, and, as Wesley Morris wrote in The New York Times, Jordan turns every reaction into gold. The minute when he defends how hard he drove his teammates, then calls for a break with tears in his eyes, is the most revealing in it.

It is also a portrait made with its subject's company, Jump 23, as a partner. Ken Burns said that is not how good journalism works, Horace Grant called about 90 percent of it untrue, and Luc Longley and Ron Harper, starters on that last team, barely appear. The Emmy for documentary series was deserved anyway: this is magnificent and one-sided at once.