Big Shot: The easy appeal of John Stamos’ new Disney+ series

With an easy charm and slick production values, John Stamos’ new Disney+ is an appealing proposition.

If you see images or the poster from Disney+’s new John Stamos series Big Shot, it gives the impression of a different type of show.

The positioning of Stamos on a basketball court surrounded by female schoolgirls in uniform, plus the Disneyness of it all, makes Big Shot appear to be some family friendly, wholesome, extended after school special about team spirit and overcoming the odds.

Of course, Big Shot is still about team spirit and overcoming the odds – but this is more of a family drama than you might expect, and a very appealing one at that.

Stamos plays Marvyn Korn, a very successful college basketball coach with several championships under his belt. An angry outburst and a bout of chair throwing sees him punted from the lucrative league, landing at the only place who will offer him a job – an elite private girls’ school in California.

Big Shot isn’t as “after school special” as it looks.

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It’s a big step down but Marvyn has little choice. So, he moves to the picturesque beach town, blustering in with his “my way or the highway” approach to coaching. It doesn’t take long before he’s brought down to Earth – in this case, Earth is a world of privilege, but you get the drift.

His assistant coach is Holly Barrett (Jessalyn Gilsig), who seems very willing to help Marvyn out and the pair immediately slide into an easy rapport, with her giving him insight into teenage girls.

He also seems to have a surprisingly unprickly relationship with the principal (Yvette Nicole Brown) even though the rest of the faculty is sceptical – at best – about his presence.

But it’s also the parents he has to be wary of, particularly Larry Gruzinsky (Michael Trucco) whose largesse bankrolled his job.

The girls – primarily Louise (Nell Verlaque), Destiny (Tiana Le), Olive (Monique Green), Mouse (Tisha Custodio) and Samantha (Cricket Wampler) – present different challenges for him but Big Shot is quick to establish a bond between the team and the coach.

And then there’s his connection to his own teenage daughter Emma (Sophia Mitri Schloss), someone he doesn’t know that well.

Disney+ Big Shot John Stamos

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If you’re thinking Big Shot is setting Marvyn up to learn and grow, you’d be right. But despite the opening montage with that chair-throwing incident, he doesn’t start off the series as a bad dude, just flawed – and Stamos is far too charming to be unlikeable.

In fact, the guy who throws the chair doesn’t ever show up – at least not in the first three episodes made available for review – so Big Shot isn’t really the redemption tale it sells itself as, at least not subtextually.

Everyone on the show is trying to be good people, sometimes they just fail at it – it makes the characters easy to root for, even when they’re making bad choices.

Despite the challenges it lays out for Marvyn, the jeopardy in Big Shot is pretty low-level. There aren’t the vicious bullies of The Karate Kid or The Mighty Ducks, or the love-to-hate characters of The O.C., which Big Shot at least visually evokes at times.

There are tonal inconsistencies in the pilot but by the second episode, it’s bedded itself in as a light dramedy.

John Stamos leads the cast of Big Shot.

Big Shot closer to the kind of traditional American drama you’d find on a broadcast channel than you would on streaming in that it’s fairly slick and rather earnest. And that has a lot to do with who’s behind the camera.

Created by Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garrett, it was developed by David E. Kelley and Dean Lorey, with Bill D’Elia as an executive producer and director.

What those names represent are old hands when it comes to American TV, with Kelley having done the likes of Chicago Hope, Boston Public (which Gilsig was a regular on), Ally McBeal and more while D’Elia has directed everything from Doogie Howser and Northern Exposure to The West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy.

These are people who know how to make a certain type of television and that bring that experience and skillset to this, which makes Big Shot an easy, comforting proposition that’s not going to throw a chair at you.

Big Shot starts streaming on Disney+ on Friday, April 16

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