"I loved them and I loved how the Americans really celebrate their wins," Malaki-Williams said. "I thought, 'Why can't we do something like that?'
"The Highlanders appealed because nobody expected them to come back from a terrible year in 2013 and win in 2015.
"It was quite a mission. I started to do it during lockdown in 2020. I did some of the editing at home on my kitchen table while the kids were running around."
What makes "1 To 39" compulsive viewing is how frank the Highlanders are. Aaron Smith sadly talks about fist fights at the end of season party in 2013. Wheeler muses about double standards, and how newly signed All Blacks, including Ma'a Nonu, Brad Thorn, and Tony Woodcock, were treated better by the coaches than local youngsters.
Manu is massively impressive, radiating decency and courage, and Joseph's strength of character is illustrated by the fact that after their critical meeting, he appointed Manu co-captain of the team with Ben Smith. The arc of the documentary, from huge disunity to a championship victory, is a reminder that well told sports stories can match any fictional drama.
Malaki-Williams is now a creative producer at Sky, and his next project, "All Access: Moana Pasifika", which screens on June 21, will hopefully herald a new era for in depth examinations of our rugby on screen.
Oddly, considering how many books there are on our rugby, documentaries on the game here are a rare breed.
Two personal favourites came exactly 30 years apart.
In 2019 "By The Balls" on TVNZ was a wonderful example of how the best stories sometimes need time for participants to be completely open.
Producer and co-director Charlotte Purdy came to the project as a history, rather than a rugby, enthusiast, who realised 1987 was a dramatic year for New Zealand, with the country becoming nuclear free, and Te Reo an official language.
Initially she worked on a documentary about Buck Shelford making the All Black haka authentic, but then broadened the parameters to include the first Rugby World Cup in '87, and ultimately the upheavals from the rebel All Black tour, with a team called the Cavaliers, to apartheid era South Africa in 1986.
Watching it again this week on TVNZ On Demand, insights in "By The Balls" still have the power to startle.
David Kirk obviously trusted Purdy enough to be completely frank in her interviews with him about the brutal treatment he received inside the All Blacks from some returning Cavaliers. There's a brilliant, but agonising, moment when you see Kirk, captaining the All Blacks against the Wallabies in '86, cut out of an on field huddle by his own team-mates. Thanks to "By The Balls" that now makes complete sense.
Once again truth is stranger than fiction, as Kirk leads the All Blacks to a thrilling World Cup victory in the inaugural tournament, and then literally reaches out and pulls Cavalier tour organiser and captain, Andy Dalton, to him to share in the presentation of the Cup.
Thirty years earlier John Kirwan and his good friend Ric Salizzo, later the creator of "The Crowd Goes Wild", made a light hearted, still charming, inside look at the '89 All Black tour to Wales and Ireland, "The Good, The Bad, and The Rugby."
It's worth another viewing on the New Zealand On Air website just to watch the look of horror on Zinzan Brooke's face when the tiny Welsh pit pony he's riding bolts, or to see Warren Gatland looking about 16 years old, or to hear the quips of midfielder John Schuster, who with a straight face opines that he expects some "very big offers" from league clubs after his excellent game against a Welsh club.
