TV Pick of the Week: Fifteen-Love - review by Yvette Huddleston

Aidan Turner plays professional tennis coach Glenn Lapthorn who is accused of sexual abuse by his former protegee Justine Pearce (Ella Lily Hyland). Five years earlier at the age of 17 when Pearce, a gifted player, was competing in the latter stages of the French Open, her first Grand Slam event, she suffered a serious wrist injury which ended her career just as it was about to take off. Pearce has since qualified as a sports physio and is working at the elite tennis academy where she once trained as a young teenager. She appears to be happy enough with her new career, but then Lapthorn reappears in her life and it sends her into a tailspin.

Academy director Andi Woodward (Anna Chancellor) has appointed Lapthorn, who has since gone on to coach other rising tennis stars, as an ambassador for the organisation as it enters a lucrative partnership with a US-based counterpart and he has moved back with his wife and young children to live locally. Initially when Pearce makes her allegations, it is unclear whether she is telling the truth. Could it be that she is motivated by jealousy? There is a suggestion that she had a crush on Lapthorn and had been rebuffed. Or hurt by what she sees as his abandoning after her injury. Justine’s best friend Renee (Harmony Rose Bremner) is sceptical, questioning why she has never mentioned this before; even Pearce’s own mother doesn’t believe her.

Hania Elkington’s script skilfully maintains this ambiguity throughout the first episode, then ramps up the tension as uncomfortable truths gradually begin to emerge in subsequent episodes with the narrative intercutting between the past and the present to present a complicated picture. It explores the power dynamics of the relationship between coach and player, the complex nature of sporting success and the challenges of rebuilding a life once a competitive career comes to an end.

Both Turner and Hyland, outstanding in her first major screen role, give subtle, nuanced performances in a compelling story that asks uncomfortable questions about who we are prepared to believe in such situations and why.