A League of Their Own (2022)

Inevitably building toward a big game, A League of Their Own doesn't go down in the box score as an unqualified success -- it's basically a solid single -- but credit the producers with an interesting idea, slickly produced, which feels a bit too stretched and slow spread over eight episodes. In terms of the streaming field, that's a league, frankly, in which the show has plenty of company.

The show is built on two central figures who aren’t as strong as the minor characters orbiting them. ... So much of it could be gloriously delightful if it were just a little less conscious of navigating around the triumphs and drawbacks of its predecessor.

Not quite a home run, but it captures some of that Lioness pride in women dreaming, and scoring, big.

One issue is the disconnect in tones between the Peaches’ story—which, done right, would be more than enough to fill hour-long episodes—and Max’s equally complicated family drama. Both plots are worthwhile, but they crowd each other out. Which leads to an even bigger problem: with runtime at a premium, Graham and Jacobson rarely find space for fun.

This new League(*) is interesting and fun in many ways, with a strong cast highlighted by D’Arcy Carden from The Good Place. But in attempting to improve on perfection — or, at least, to point out the imperfections of the mainstream movie studio comedy system of the early Nineties — the show reveals some large flaws of its own.

The show splits its time between the nascent Rockford Peaches and Max (Chanté Adams), an ambitious pitcher excluded from the league because she’s Black. Both halves of the narrative wind through queer spaces and various character awakenings but only with a well-meaning mildness that feels like preamble rather than actual story.

This show seems at times unsure of what to say next, or where to take its story. And attempts to broaden the scope of that story can alternately present an admirable curiosity about what more can be said about the history of women in baseball and a tendency to avoid engaging history on its own terms.

Many of these actresses are doing the best they can with the material and deserve another swing, but as it stands now the show is no home run.

Partly hampered by their fealty to the original film, Jacobson and co-creator Will Graham don’t swing for the fences. Instead, the eight-episode first season of “A League of Their Own” is, say, a solid single up the middle. At least they didn’t strike out; a second season could hold much potential.