The Quarantine Stream: ESPN's '30 For 30' Documentaries Are The Perfect Way To Fill Time Between Episodes Of 'The Last Dance'

(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they've been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)The Series: 30 for 30Where You Can Stream It: ESPN+The Pitch: It seems like everyone is watching The Last Dance, ESPN's incredible 10-part documentary series about the final year of the Chicago Bulls dream team. But with only two episodes being released each weekend, you can fill the time between Sunday evenings by exploring the network's 30 for 30 series, a library of some of the best sports documentaries ever made.Why It's Essential Quarantine Viewing: The COVID-19 pandemic has shut down the sports industry, which means no packed arenas and no games to watch. For some folks, this is devastating. For people like me, who casually follow a handful of teams, I'm doing just fine. However, these two groups can meet in the middle with 30 for 30, the ESPN documentary film series chronicling some of the biggest, strangest, and most important moments in sports history. The best of these aren't just exciting and/or horrifying and/or devastating and/or triumphant chronicles of players and teams – they're extraordinary documentary films that showcase unique voices and tones in addition to simply being informative.

To date, there are over 100 30 for 30 films (not bad for a series that, as its name implies, was supposed to only have 30 entries) and I've been catching up with them on the ESPN+ streaming service. And since you may be using that service to watch the extraordinary The Last Dance, you should seek these out, too. Because like that series, the best 30 for 30 films are so much more than sports docs. They're chronicles of culture and history, using sports to explore humanity and what drives us. It's an untouchable library, where even the weakest entries tend to be pretty good. However, you may have to search for each individual title on the app, because ESPN+ is a user interface nightmare that deserves a total overhaul. Rarely has so much great content been hidden so well.

While you generally can't go wrong with clicking on any episode of 30 for 30, here are a few that I'd recommend right now.

Speaking of great companion pieces to The Last Dance, Rodman: For Better or Worse offers a feature-length look at the strange and tragic life of Dennis Rodman, one of the most unique, misunderstood, and controversial figures in American sports. This doc is vivid and emotional, using stirring re-enactments and stylized touches to enhance the humor and tragedy of Rodman's unbelievable life story.

The sports documentary and the true crime documentary collide in The Two Escobars, a bone-chilling look at what it was like to play soccer in Colombia during the nation's darkest days. The title refers to Pablo Escobar, the infamous and all-powerful drug kingpin, and Andres Escobar, the nation's biggest soccer star. How these two intersect, and what becomes of them, is the stuff of nightmares.

Perhaps the most formally daring 30 for 30 episode, June 17, 1994 has no narration and no talking heads. It's a long montage of one of the most important days in sports history, a day where teams and players were making low-key history in seemingly every major sport...all while O.J. Simpson led police on the most famous chases of all time in his white Bronco. You don't need to know a thing about the sports of the era to appreciate the filmmaking prowess on display here.