SCORES:
Laughs: 3
Drama: 4
Social issues: 5
SHE SAW
I was 11 when the film A League of Their Own was released. I remember it well, even though I wasn't at all sporty. It was rare for Hollywood blockbusters at the time to feature female-centred stories in the way it did - it wasn't a rom-com, there wasn't one token female character and no one was dying. It passed the Bechdel test with flying colours. Groundbreaking at the time, it probably set Geena Davis on the path to becoming the feminist Hollywood activist she is today. But it was flawed. The new series adaptation sets out to correct some of the original film's issues while keeping the feel-good girl power sentiment of the original.
It's created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), who plays the lead role of Carson Shaw. As with most of Jacobson's work since the final "coming out" season of Broad City, her character is a woman discovering her sexuality. Her husband's at war and while he's gone she runs away to join the All-American Professional Women's Baseball League, where she meets Broad City alum, D'Arcy Carden, in the role of Greta Gill, and sparks fly. Where the original film had a subtle wink to lesbians that you really had to be looking for to notice, the series dives into the truth of the team with much more chutzpah.
Along with multiple lesbian love stories, the show about an all-white baseball team - the Rockford Peaches - finds a way to incorporate an African American storyline in a way the film failed to do. There's a moment in the film in which a wayward ball finds its way to the "coloured" area of the stadium and a black woman returns an incredible throw back to Davis. It's a nod to the existence of talented black ball players who weren't allowed in the AAPWBL, which lasts a few seconds on the big screen.