The old ball game

• Published date: 16 August 2022
• Publication title: Signal

I hold such affection for Penny Marshall’s widely-loved baseball film A League of Their Own that, for years, I felt an irrationally strong flash of disappointment whenever its name appeared in the TV guide and I ended up flicking over to a quiz show about sport. I expected Madonna with a baseball bat; I got James Corden and golf gags. Such a terrible wrong will be righted at last by this new A League of Their Own , a gorgeous, warm and expansive eight-episode version of the story that inspired the film: the trials and tribulations of a women’s baseball league, put together to draw in the paying punters during wartime, which was hugely popular in its day, then all but erased from the history of the sport

While Marshall’s film largely told the story of Dottie (Geena Davis), this has the time and the cultural appetite to tell the stories of many women from all walks of life. Abbi Jacobson, who co-created the show with Will Graham, stars as Carson, a small-town slugger who catches a last-minute train to Chicago to try out for the league. There, she meets a ragtag bunch of fellow baseball lovers who will become a new version of family.

It is charming from the off. Jacobson, who found fame with Broad City, is an effervescent lead whose comic style emerges as a sort of walking cringe, wincing her way through varying degrees of embarrassment, all the while hanging on to a winning sincerity. There is a democracy to her role here, both as star and showrunner. Carson is one of the main characters, whose importance to the team grows throughout the series, but she is reluctant to take the spotlight. One of the underlying messages — crucial, I suppose, in stories about team sports — is the importance of pulling together. It is surprisingly heartening, even inspirational, feel-good drama, yet without slipping into trite platitudes or excessive sentimentality.

The story begins with Carson, but quickly becomes a broader church. Her co-lead is Max (Chante Adams), a pitcher with a staggering arm who is excluded from trying out for the new women’s league because she is black.

Carson and Max face their own troubles and issues and, while they occasionally meet to discuss their lives, their orbits are very different. Shows that run on two separate rails do not always come together, but here it works brilliantly, and both sides hold their own appeal. Max’s story is particularly rich, and unfolds at a...