With a lead playing a thoroughly dislikeable victim and her coach also dislikeable but with hints that he may be wrongly accused, the first episode tries to set up a thriller of polarised points of view and it did at first look set to be one where you couldn't tell who was the victim until the end. Sadly however, the hand-holding need to flag every story with a rider about upsetting content gave the game away and if there was any doubt as to what the subject matter was and whom the victim was, well, the banner-warning ruined it.
In any event, by the start of the third episode they had given up on any mystery and instead it became a very long winded and, at times, silly tooing-and-frowing about a young woman seeking revenge/justice for impropriety and psychological manipulation by her tennis coach. The problem with where they took the story was that the coach just wasn't that insipid and although they tried to portray him as evil in the end it didn't play out terribly convincing, partly because the writing relied on casting every other adult as completely dumb and every victim as totally submissive and abjectly helpless. The police were also cast in this light. It was therefore badly written/researched which is a shame as the subject matter deserved more gravitas and accuracy as to the true unfolding nature of real-world events such as these.
Even the internal inquiry was so unrealistic and the fact that she was made redundant would be completely illegal in the real world and any organisation would take advice on such matters and would be quickly told that you can't make someone redundant without wider consultation and certainly not a person alleging abuse by a director of the company. She also didn't have any legal representation with either the police or at her internal inquiry and it was so completely erroneous and unrealistic that I wondered why they even bothered delving into these scenes if they couldn't provide even a modicum of factual realism.
Given the, at times, soap-opera quality of acting from the lead actors and some of the supporting cast, it's impossible to see how this Amazon Prime Originals series is achieving the rating it has, which puts it up there with some of the best rated series on Amazon-owned IMDB, currently ahead (at 7.5/10) of Bridgerton(7.4/10) for example. Interestingly, it has yet to garner the traction needed to even register ratings on other ratings platforms. Maybe it's the tennis theme, who knows exactly what influences ratings these days, It certainly isn't all down to the quality of production/acting/writing.
Whether deliberate or not, the dislikeablility of nearly every character in this show was also annoying as it made it difficult to root for justice when everyone was so self-centered and stupid. It was also drawn out over twice as many episodes as necessary to tell this predictable tale. Nil points.
In any event, by the start of the third episode they had given up on any mystery and instead it became a very long winded and, at times, silly tooing-and-frowing about a young woman seeking revenge/justice for impropriety and psychological manipulation by her tennis coach. The problem with where they took the story was that the coach just wasn't that insipid and although they tried to portray him as evil in the end it didn't play out terribly convincing, partly because the writing relied on casting every other adult as completely dumb and every victim as totally submissive and abjectly helpless. The police were also cast in this light. It was therefore badly written/researched which is a shame as the subject matter deserved more gravitas and accuracy as to the true unfolding nature of real-world events such as these.
Even the internal inquiry was so unrealistic and the fact that she was made redundant would be completely illegal in the real world and any organisation would take advice on such matters and would be quickly told that you can't make someone redundant without wider consultation and certainly not a person alleging abuse by a director of the company. She also didn't have any legal representation with either the police or at her internal inquiry and it was so completely erroneous and unrealistic that I wondered why they even bothered delving into these scenes if they couldn't provide even a modicum of factual realism.
Given the, at times, soap-opera quality of acting from the lead actors and some of the supporting cast, it's impossible to see how this Amazon Prime Originals series is achieving the rating it has, which puts it up there with some of the best rated series on Amazon-owned IMDB, currently ahead (at 7.5/10) of Bridgerton(7.4/10) for example. Interestingly, it has yet to garner the traction needed to even register ratings on other ratings platforms. Maybe it's the tennis theme, who knows exactly what influences ratings these days, It certainly isn't all down to the quality of production/acting/writing.
Whether deliberate or not, the dislikeablility of nearly every character in this show was also annoying as it made it difficult to root for justice when everyone was so self-centered and stupid. It was also drawn out over twice as many episodes as necessary to tell this predictable tale. Nil points.