Fifteen-Love: This MeToo tennis drama never feels predictable

While tennis stars are generally boring, don’t let that put you off Fifteen-Love – this series has all the ingredients of a gripping drama.

Ella Lily Hyland stars in Fifteen-Love.

It’s always jarring when tennis stars turn out to be interesting. Think of your first impressions of, say, Tim Henman (boring), or Andy Murray (grumpy and boring). Or Pete Sampras (hairy and boring), or Roger Federer (so boring), or Bjorn Borg (cyborg boring), or Novak Djokovic (conspiracy theorist boring), or Boris Becker (boring despite cavorting with models in restaurant cupboards, which doesn’t actually sound boring at all).

It’s true that neither John McEnroe nor Andre Agassi seemed superficially boring, which I expect was down to the hair. Similarly, pondering the Williams sisters, and your various Sharapovas, Kournikovas and Navratilovas and so on, it strikes me that a spot of accessorising goes a long way. None of this, you understand, is to suggest that tennis itself is boring. Personally, it’s the only sport I can really get into, putting it up there with, say, a mid-level quiz show. Not once, though, have I found myself thinking, “Wow, I bet you’re fun socially!” while watching some hero in an Aertex.

Justine Pearce is interesting. When we meet her in Fifteen-Love, played by Ella Lily Hyland, she’s an electric, dangerous new teenage talent, wisecracking and brash. She’s also doing her utmost to snog her middle-aged coach Glenn Lapthorn in the changing room before a big match; a horribly uncomfortable dynamic. True, he’s played by Aidan Turner, and in Poldark they would probably have had about eight kids by now. Here it’s pure transgression, and her smirks only go to show how little she understands that. Then she’s out on the court and being amazing, then she’s rolling on the ground, screaming and clutching her wrist. We’re only a few minutes in.

The story picks up five years later. Justine, we learn, has not played since. Now a hard-drinking, bisexual nightclubber, she’s still in the same leafy world so dominated by tennis that it might as well be a cult. These days, though, she’s a physio. Then Glenn arrives at her tennis club with a new championship-winning protégée and his smoking hot wife. Justine, who already has a reputation for being erratic, responds badly. Within a day, to the weary astonishment of everyone, she has accused him of historic sexual assault.

This is a story about sport and sexual grooming. I won’t spoil it for you by revealing the twists and turns of precisely who has done what to whom, but your first guesses may not be too wide of the mark. That none of this ever feels predictable, even for a second, has a lot to do with Hyland, a relative unknown who I expect won’t be unknown for long. She’s Irish, not that you would know it from this, given her scratch-perfect London vocal fry. In other hands, that Justine’s allegations are disbelieved by everyone including her mother and her best friend could feel contrived. Hyland, though, pitches her as a nightmare, crackling with energy at a level just below the manic. She’s drunk, she’s a stalker, she’s bitter, she’s petty, she’s jealous, she’s not to be trusted. Unless she is.

If I have a criticism of Fifteen-Love it’s that the freshness of the early episodes doesn’t quite go the distance. “This looks rubbish,” my wife said, walking in when I was on episode four. I could see where she was coming from. As things progress, the world-building starts to take a back seat and the plot loses its nuance, turning clumsy and thrillerish with some twists you could see coming a mile off and another that threatened the integrity of all that went before. Turner’s Glenn, particularly, grows less charismatic and more cartoon sleazy, flailing into chaos.

All of this I can forgive, particularly since it comes good at the end. And, even when things get silly, you can all but smell the fresh white paint on the grass.

The big problem for series two of The Bear is that series one was so good. Telling the story of Jeremy Allen White’s virtuoso chef Carmy Berzatto taking over his Chicago family diner after his brother’s suicide, it was funny, cool, relentlessly intense and surely had you shouting “Chef!” and “Cousin!” in your own kitchen, even while only making toast.

Jeremy Allen White as Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto in The Bear. Picture: Frank Ockenfels/FX

Then, when things were at their bleakest, it leapt to an ending with the humblest, silliest deus ex machina imaginable as Carmy found the fortune his brother had borrowed from a mafia uncle sealed inside a hundred cans of tomato sauce. Only to the smallest degree did it even make sense, but The Bear had won the right to make you giggle. So long as that was that.

The good news is that it’s still tremendous, even though that wasn’t that at all. Now, Carmy is rebuilding. He has money, but not enough. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), his former sous-chef and now his partner, still marries absolute faith in him with a face that constantly, perhaps despite her best efforts, says “WTF!?” Meanwhile, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), his sort-of cousin (“Cousin!”) still has a status within the restaurant much like the one Bez had in the band Happy Mondays. As in, it’s never quite clear what he does, but it wouldn’t be the same without him. Although, sensing obsolescence, he is starting to fret.

They now have 18 months to pay back yet another mafia uncle loan, or they lose everything. The restaurant is broken, shuttered and in breach of every city regulation in the book, which means they need to spend the first few months simply rebuilding. This gives the show a lot more space to breathe than it used to have. Sydney tours the city’s other restaurants, seeking inspiration. Bread guy Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is sent off for an entire episode to study under a British chef in Copenhagen, played by Will Poulter. Food, we learn, is fraternity before it is a competition.

In a way, though, The Bear isn’t really about food. The restaurant hipsters, the bloggers, the one-upper I-queued-at-this-place-you-don’t-know wankers have no place here. This is about craft and questing perfectionism. It’s about those tiny instants, serene and sublime, when it all goes exactly right, even if only in a pudding. And, even as a show, it gives you plenty of them.

Fifteen-Love, streaming on Binge.
The Bear, streaming on Disney+.