Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A League Of Their Own’ On Prime Video, An Adaptation Of The Hit Film With New Characters And Stories

The 1992 film A League Of Their Own was a massive hit for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the presence of Geena Davis, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, Tom Hanks and director Penny Marshall. But it was also about a brief time in the ’40s where women got opportunities they never had, simply because the country’s men were off to war. Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham have adapted that film for Amazon Prime Video with a new set of characters and stories, and ventured into territory that wouldn’t have been imagined 30 years ago.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman runs to catch a train. She’s carrying a suitcase and a bag with bats in it. “Lake Valley, Idaho, 1943.”

The Gist: The woman running to catch the train is Carson Shaw (Abbi Jacobson). She’s going to Chicago to try out for the All-American Baseball League, the first professional league of women baseball players. She’s going despite the fact that her husband Charlie (Patrick J. Adams) is away at war. She’s been playing baseball all her life and just couldn’t pass up this chance.

In Chicago, she meets Greta Gill (D’Arcy Carden) and Jo De Luca (Melanie Field), who are also going to the tryouts. Jo thinks she’s competition, but Greta immediately takes a liking to her. At Baker Field, there are plenty of hopefuls, including Lupe García (Roberta Colindrez), a tough and impressive pitcher, but they are all impressed when Carson, a catcher, almost hits a ball out of the park.

Another hopeful, Rockford’s own Max Chapman (Chanté Adams), arrives with her best friend, Clance Morgan (Gbemisola Ikumelo), but is turned away. Not because she isn’t good; in fact, in anger she throws the ball from the outfield into the seats behind home plate. She’s turned away because she’s Black, something that the candy-company owner of the league, Morris Baker (Kevin Dunn), just won’t allow. Baker is also concerned that the women won’t project a feminine enough image to the American public, something that his marketing director, Marshall (Nat Faxon), assures him can be fixed.

Carson, Greta, Lupe and Jo are all placed on the Rockford Peaches; in an effort to get the women to be more “ladylike,” they’re assigned a chaperone and strict rules, which they all break immediately. In Chicago, Carson and Greta connect over a haircut and Greta’s desire to open Carson up about why she’s leaving her marriage. It leads to an even closer connection in Rockford, where Carson runs into Max; Clance’s husband Guy (Aaron Jennings) is a cook there.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The obvious comparison is the 1992 film version of A League Of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall. No one associated with that version is involved in this version, which was created and written by Jacobson and Will Graham (Mozart In The Jungle). The old characters aren’t a part of this story, either.

Our Take: What Jacobson and Graham have done by pretty much starting from scratch with A League Of Their Own is make a story that, even though it takes place 80 years ago, is more contemporary for the 21st century than the original movie was for the 1990s. New characters can have their own backstories, and their own desires and dreams, and the series format gives Jacobson, Graham and the writing staff (which includes Ikumelo) room to explore aspects of these women’s lives that the movie couldn’t even approach.

One is sexuality. Even though it’s the ’40s, the characters on the show are open about who they’re attracted to. Gretta gets Carson to kiss her, but then goes off with some random male soldier she met in the bar. Jo is openly jealous of the attention Gretta is giving Carson. Even the hotel manager in Chicago says to himself after encountering the pair, “Nope, not attracted to them at all.” During a time when it’s widely assumed that people in the LGBTQ community were closeted, this show makes a point to say that just because it wasn’t out in the open doesn’t mean that it was hidden when people were in an open environment.

The other topic that this version tackles is race, but not in a way that pounds it over viewers’ heads. Given the fact that MLB didn’t start to integrate until Jackie Robinson’s first game in 1947, it’s not a shock that Max was turned away from the tryout. But what we love about her story is that it’s one of the richest storylines in the series. Her banter with Clance made us laugh every single time, and the pull she feels between pursuing her baseball dreams and taking over her parents’ salon is real. As her mother Toni (Saidah Ekulona) says, owning a business is the only way for Black people to exert any control over their lives, which is why she is advocating so hard for her daughter to drop her baseball pipe dream.

Jacobson has written herself a role that plays into her strengths; she displays the same wobbly confidence — about her life skills, not her ballplaying skills — as she did in Broad City. Carden, so funny in oddball roles in shows like The Good Place and Barry, is alluring and confident as Greta, who seems like someone who will both inspire Carson to be her true self and also break her heart in a million pieces.

We’ve yet to see this version of the Peaches in action, under their manager Dove Porter (Nick Offerman). And, in what might be the only nod to the film, Rosie O’Donnell will show up at some point as Vi, the owner of a gay bar who likes to dress in three-piece men’s suits. But the way the ensemble has been put together and what we’ve seen in the first episode gives us a promising glimpse at the rest of the first season.

Sex and Skin: It’s all talk but very little action.

Parting Shot: As the Peaches celebrate their first day in uniform, Max throws a pitch and hits the target the drew on the wall. She smiles confidently. Seems that her baseball dreams aren’t done yet.

Sleeper Star: We loved Ikumelo as Clance, mainly because she keeps Max in line when some of her friend’s impulsiveness comes out.

Most Pilot-y Line: Jo’s roommate in Rockford asks her if there are going to be any cute boys around. “You know, I haven’t really thought about that,” she says.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This new version of A League Of Their Own explores territory that the original movie didn’t even attempt to explore. Whether that makes the series a coherent whole is yet to be seen. But it certainly is off to a good start.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.