A former Wimbledon player recently said to me in passing that tennis is a lonely sport— ‘If I could go back, I wouldn’t take it up. I’d do something else.’ Fifteen-Love, the new TV series about tennis on Amazon Prime, demonstrates the isolation and vulnerability of young players, especially girls. Future tennis stars start young and often train privately with male coaches. The sport has become notorious for coaches who abuse their authority and their players.
But Fifteen-Love isn’t a straightforward victim-and-culprit plot. Ella Lyly Hyland plays a complicated protagonist, a former Wimbledon champion who lost it all and now walks around shouting at people and crying. She wears cool earphones over her tousled blonde hair, there’s chipped black polish on her nails and her cheeks are streaked with day-old mascara. She is selfish, bratty, rude and at times dangerous. Her coach, the alleged abuser, is the opposite—charming, warm, engaging and sought after as a coach for the top athletes.
The story begins with Justine’s match at the French Open, the pinnacle of her rise to tennis glory, and from there she crashes and burns. A wrist injury knocks her out of the professional ring and her coach, Glenn (played by Aidan Turner), moves on to more promising athletes. Justine gets so angry she walks into a police station and accuses Glenn of sexually abusing her when she was sixteen, and this is where the show takes off. Glenn denies everything and at first it’s difficult to know who to believe—we just don’t have enough to go on.
Soon flashbacks show us glimpses of an intimate, intense relationship between them, but not a sexual one. Yet. But who knows what they got up to during those long sweaty afternoons of tennis training? Glenn even blindfolds Justine during one steamy session, gently touching her hip as he tells her to just feel the perfect serve. Their hands touch, their eyes are level— she’s tall for a woman and he’s short, so it evens out.
Any young girl would fall in love with Aidan Turner under the blast of his full attention— even in a world without Poldark or Kili the sexy dwarf from the Hobbit films. Is Glenn in love with Justine, or does he simply enjoy her adoration? If they had sex would it be illegal or just unwise? But they never had sex, not even close, says Glenn. Justine says they did but maybe she is just spiteful and jealous that Glenn’s career took off without her.
The best part about the show is how unreliable and unstable the heroine is. She’s like a grown up in a fifteen-year-old’s body— she wears crop tops, sleeps with strangers, shouts at her mum and shows up to work with a hangover. She also spikes young girls’ drinks, breaks into flats and houses, sabotages her friend’s career and vomits on her mother’s carpet. You can see why even her close friends tire of her victimhood. But soon Glenn’s story wavers.
Aidan Turner stated recently that he’s tired of playing hunks like Poldark—‘you can only play romantic leads for so long’—and his switch to a morally ambiguous lover is convincing. There’s something too earnest, too attentive about his character, Glenn. Even if he didn’t seduce Justine, he had ample opportunity to— and for some men that’s all it takes to condemn them.
The effects the allegations have on Glenn’s wife Khalida are devastating, and subtly played by Manon Azem. If I were in her position, I think I’d behave exactly as she does. Anna Chancellor plays And Woodward, the head of the tennis academy where Justine and Glenn both work. As soon as the accusation against Glenn arises she switches into PR damage control mode.
Chancellor is brilliant at playing ambiguous characters too. She’s annoying and pathetic as Duckface in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and cruel but pathetic as Miss Bingley in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice. In Fifteen-Love she shows Glenn her unswerving support while at the same time, promising Justine that she’s on her side. When things go against Justine you can bet which side she takes. The inquiry into Glenn’s alleged misconduct is swift and inconclusive— so, utterly believable. ‘The Panel’ finds insufficient evidence against the tennis coach. Also Glenn’s lawyer points out that even if he and Justine did have sex it would have been legal before the 2018 legislation.
The series leaves a few loose ends hang—what about Luisa, the American exchange girl barely over sixteen who may or may not have had a sexual relationship with Glenn? And what happens to the secret plot to infiltrate Glenn’s inner circle by acting as his new PR?
Most importantly, what becomes of Justine’s too-young stepfather who, it turns out, was secretly sleeping at her flat while her best friend was there? A few of the storylines fall behind as the focus narrows on Glenn and Justine’s past relationship. The characters’ ambiguity subtly melts away, with a good side and a bad side emerging. But the good guy still plays dirty and the bad guy still seems like the reasonable and calm one. When the credits roll, there’s a website shown for victims of sexual grooming in tennis. It’s usually annoying to have a message advertised so blatantly as part of a fictional TV series, but it didn’t matter this time—Fifteen-Love is a gripping, believable and complicated drama that stands on its own without the hook of being ‘important’ or ‘relevant’.
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