Fifteen-Love review: Tennis drama struggles to find its purpose

• 📺 Where to watch Fifteen-Love: Premieres on Prime Video on Friday, 21 July
  

• ⭐️ Our rating: 3/5
  

• 🍿 Watch it if you liked: Wimbledon, Break Point, She Said.
  

• 🎭 Who's in it?: Aidan Turner, Ella Lily Hyland, Harmony Rose Bremner, Anna Chancellor, Jess Darrow.
  

• ⏰ How long is it? 6 episodes, approximately one hour each.
  

• 📖 What’s it about? After a wrist injury forced her to retire early from tennis, former athlete Justine struggles to pick up the pieces of her life but when her ex-coach Glenn comes back into her life she finds new purpose and decides to speak out by accusing him of sexual abuse.

Fifteen-Love forces you to question, what is the truth? And why should we think someone is more believable than the other just because of the way they present themselves to society?

It's an interesting debate, and one that the Prime Video drama thrives on as it takes the #MeToo movement and applies it to the tennis world to uncover the darker side of the sport. It does so through Justine (Ella Lily Hyland), a former tennis prodigy who was forced to quit the sport after a life-changing injury.

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The loss of purpose has left her a shadow of her former self, and when her ex-coach Glenn (Aidan Turner) turns back up in her life with a new star player she decides to speak out against him and accuse him of sexual abuse during the years that she was training with him.

Fifteen-Love approaches its subject in an intriguing way by showing Justine to be an unreliable narrator. Her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic the longer she is back in Glenn's orbit, while her peers, and even her own mother, call her accusations baseless.

Viewers won't know whether to take her side or not, and It is a different way of tackling the subject. But, it is also a bit of a double-edged sword for Fifteen-Love.

The show could have given a frank examination of the #MeToo movement, and the issue of power-imbalance between coach and player in the sport, but it instead opts to up the drama for the sake of adding shock value. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work.

While the tennis drama tries to point a mirror at society to show how women who come forward with accusations of abuse can be dismissed or vilified, it very often falls into habit of doing just that. By doubting Justine and depicting her in such a confusing manner makes it seem like people who see women that way may not be being unreasonable.

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Hyland does well to bring her flawed character to life despite the narrative conundrum her character is forced into, and it is in the quiet moments where Justine is left to her own dark thoughts that we truly get to appreciate the actor's nuanced performance.

Turner, too, brings an interesting new side of himself in the role of Glenn, the character is unlike any he's played before and the subtleties of his portrayal heightens the tension in the series.

Gone is the Poldark heartthrob, this is a much darker character. He is always too close, his touches linger for too long, and every look belies his true nature to make Fifteen-Love an unnerving watch.

What other critics thought of Fifteen-Love:

• Evening Standard: Fifteen-Love is a scalding take on tennis culture (4-min read)

• The Telegraph: MeToo arrives on the tennis court (2-min read)

The tennis is there, but with Wimbledon just finished it'll be hard for any tennis fan not to notice the faults with the cast's games. Of course, they aren't professional tennis players but it is evident that their games would never see them reach the starry heights of grand slams in reality.

Despite its strong central performances Fifteen-Love too often loses its eyes on the ball for the narrative to be effective, and the story's convoluted tone means that in its determination to be provocative the Prime Video drama fails to find its purpose.

Fifteen-Love premieres on Prime Video on Friday, 21 July.

Watch the trailer for Fifteen-Love