‘A stirring against-the-odds tale’ … Nick Kyrgios in Break Point.reak Point, Netflix’s new behind-the-scenes documentary series about the 2022 tennis season, is by the team behind the excellent F1: Drive to Survive – but although it emulates that show’s slick presentational sheen, making tennis as exciting a subject as motor racing is difficult.
Break Point does not, however, help itself with the way in which it presents the sport. It seems to be pitching to people who know nothing about tennis: the basics of how games and sets work are explained twice within five minutes in episode one, and there’s almost no mention of tactics or technique. When footage of a match is shown, scores flash up but, since the concept of holding and breaking serves has been deemed too complex to go into, the numbers are often meaningless.
On the first point, we meet a lot of young, beautiful athletes who seem … nice. Matteo Berrettini of Italy, Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, Taylor Fritz of the US, Maria Sakkari of Greece – all of them allow cameras to follow them off-court and all of them are forthcoming and good-humoured. But characters to rival the personalities of yesteryear perhaps need more time to emerge.
What a numpty!
hate tennis
Hmm. No