Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fantasy Show with Matthew Berry’ on ESPN+, A Twice-Weekly Guide For Fantasy Football Players

Fantasy football is one of the most popular pastimes in America, and The Fantasy Show With Matthew Berry is one of the most famous guides for players. Since 2017, the show has run hundreds of episodes on ESPN’s digital streaming platforms, with the sports giant’s in-house fantasy expert offering tips, tricks and tactics for players, with an oddball sensibility meant to keep things fresh through the long season ahead. The show’s new season has just debuted on ESPN+, and promises more of what armchair general managers have come to crave.

THE FANTASY SHOW WITH MATTHEW BERRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The latest season of The Fantasy Show kicks off in familiar fashion, with a cold open that sees Berry and his co-host bantering with their puppet “boss”, in the show’s typically odd take on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood or Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

The Gist: The NFL season began this past weekend, and that means fantasy football is back in full-force. With it comes the return of The Fantasy Show With Matthew Berry, which offers twice-weekly insights for the tens of millions of Americans who play the convivial form of gambling. There’s a lot packed into the 23-minute run time of an episode of the show; quick-hit segments give injury and roster updates, “loves”, “hates”, and sleeper picks, and everything a fantasy player might want to stay informed on their sport-within-a-sport. The show strives hard to be irreverent, though, breaking up the dry barrages of statistics with silly, puppet-heavy comedy segments and goofy comic bits.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Fantasy Show is pretty tonally in line with much of ESPN’s other “offbeat” programming over the years, such as First Take, Cold Pizza or Pardon The Interruption, balancing straight-faced statistical analysis with a carefully-honed series of comic bits.

Our Take: Fantasy sports is a huge business these days, and—for a large segment of the American public—it’s a huge part of their fall, with massive mental energy committed to assembling the best hypothetical roster and dominating one’s friends and/or coworkers in imagined competition. If you’re not a fantasy sports player yourself, chances are you have someone in your life who’ll take any opportunity possible to tell you about their draft, their lineup, or how badly someone’s pre-season injury derailed what surely would’ve been a championship season, if only.

Sports broadcasters like ESPN long ago realized that fantasy sports aren’t a sideshow or peripheral diversion for many fans; in fact, they’re the primary window through which many people watch football—the success or failure of one’s fantasy team might be more important to you than the success or failure of your city’s actual NFL team.

The ethos of The Fantasy Show seems to be keeping a tacit acknowledgement of how seriously people take fantasy sports, while hiding it under a veneer of silliness—the sort of thing where someone purports to be joking about something they’re very obviously not joking about. The show’s Pee-Wee Herman-like carnival atmosphere is a desperate put-on, an attempt to pretend like viewers aren’t so serious about their fantasy team that they’ll devote hours and hours each week hoping to gain some tiny edge on their competitors.

The information provided within is useful, admittedly. If you’re a player in a competitive, active league, it may well help you gain an edge, and the silliness is familiar if you’re a regular viewer of programs like Pardon The Interruption. Still, it can be a lot to abide just to beat your brother-in-law or Cathy in Accounts Receivable this week.

Sex and Skin: Nothing, unless you find fantasy sports sexy, in which case you’ve got some other things going on in your life that, frankly, are well above our pay grade to address.

Parting Shot: The show ends with a puppet psychic, “Crystal”, offering crystal-ball predictions for the week ahead, in what might be the show’s most irritating segment; it’ll get you ready for the games to kick off, if only so that the cartoonish theatrics can end.

Sleeper Star: The cast is basically Berry, co-host Daniel Dopp, and a rotating cast of puppets. Among them, Dopp is by far the most likable and best on screen.

Most Pilot-y Line: “As for your execution, I’m all for it”, Berry’s puppet foil notes, referencing a famous quote by Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach John McKay, one that was recently mangled by current Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly in a post-game interview, starting a brief sports-media kerfuffle. It’s just another example of the show’s almost-pathological insistence on trying to be funny.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If you’re a true fantasy sports junkie, maybe it’s worth it to get some insights that’ll help you score a few more points this week, but for most viewers—even if they play fantasy sports—it’ll probably just come off as grating.

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.

Watch The Fantasy Show on ESPN+