Running Point review – you’ll be desperate for Kate...

This tale of a girlboss battling the sporting world’s patriarchy is a real grind. Perhaps it’d be funny if you care deeply about the sport … but shouldn’t a comedy be able to make you laugh regardless?. Are you in the mood for a basketball comedy that has some leaden jokes and some even more leaden things to say about sexism and prejudice in the US industrial sports complex? Of course you’re not. Nobody is. But it’s here, it stars Kate Hudson and it’s called Running Point so let’s deal with it.

Image Credit: the Guardian [Lucy Mangan]

Hudson plays Isla Gordon, one of four siblings whose father owned the Los Angeles Waves basketball team. Despite being the only one of Daddy Gordon’s children who is knowledgable about the game, she has been overlooked all her life. Why? Because she is a girl and the rest of them are boys! Cue a cutesy flashback in which a child actor delivers a Sorkinesque monologue about the team’s chances and her recommended player trades while trotting beside her father down a corridor of power, before having the door shut in her face as he enters another meeting room full of men in suits. She describes him, in what passes for a zinger in this sitcom, as an old-school “sexist asshole”. So she rebels in her teens and 20s, with a 20-day marriage and a photoshoot for Playboy.

Now she and the scions are all grown up, Daddy’s dead and the boys have all the top jobs at the family firm. Cam (Justin Theroux) is a competent president and a handsome figurehead for the brand, Ness (Scott MacArthur) is general manager (after Daddy got Donald Rumsfeld to help him flee Manila after drug charges) and half-brother Sandy (Drew Tarver) is chief financial officer – smart, unathletic and, thanks to Daddy’s thoughts on the matter, still not fully comfortable with being gay. Isla is coordinator of the Waves’ charitable endeavours – a nice little job for a woman.

Then, president Cam ploughs into a roadside cafe, narrowly missing a family of tourists while under the influence of the crack to which he is, among other things, addicted. “Yes, I love it, OK?” He steps down on medical grounds. “I need to fix this. Or at least learn how to hide it better.” Theroux is the best performer and this is the best line in the opening episode. I can’t do sporting metaphors but I think I can safely say that if it were any kind of ballgame, most spectators would be slumped on the bleachers longing for half-time by now.

Anyway. Guess who big brother appoints to run the franchise in his absence? Yes, his baby sister. Because Sandy only knows numbers, Ness is too friendly with the players and Cam knows that she was unfairly overlooked by the patriarch. And the patriarchy, ladies – amirite?!.

So off we go, watching Isla girlboss her way out of tricky situations involving sponsors, lunkhead players – such as Travis (Chet Hanks), who says things like “I guess it’s take your sister to work day!” when he sees her and makes his Black teammates listen to his raps – and disrespectful star players such as Marcus (Toby Sandeman), who sends his social media manager and triple-wick candles from his wellness range to meetings in his stead.

Soon she is also battling Ness and Sandy’s growing resentment of her and their objections to her way of handling the team and planning for the season. She wants to invest in their underperforming players, not trade for others and toss them aside! And she’ll do a much cleverer deal than the one they drew up the contract for and are telling her to sign, because don’t underestimate a woman! Or try to organise a no confidence vote with the board without her finding out and sweeping your legs out from under you! Further conflict ensues when news of an illegitimate fourth son emerges who, it turns out, has been working as a vendor in the Waves stadium for the past three years. The boys want to pay him off but she insists on welcoming him into the family, even if it will mean splitting their inheritance five instead of four ways. Women! They can be annoying, but you know they’re always morally right!.

Running Point is a grind. Everyone is working hard but it’s hardly working. A few half-smiles may be raised here and there. Maybe if you understand or care about basketball it’s funnier? But any comedy should be able to rise above the need for a bond with the ostensible subject (see football and Ted Lasso). Running Point does not.