Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Break Point’ on Netflix, Taking The ‘Drive To Survive’ Formula And Applying It To Tennis

With its wildly-successful reality series Drive To Survive, Netflix created a new generation of Formula One racing fans. The streaming giant’s newest sports effort, Break Point, attempts to recreate that same magic in tennis. The ten-part series promises to follow a new generation of players at the top level of the sport, offering even the most casual viewers a reason to become fans and to care about the sport.

BREAK POINT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A dramatic overhead shot of a tennis stadium, then intense, thumping music. A series of voiceovers from tennis players describe the pressure and thrill of competing on the court. It’s a hype reel for the show, and it works.

The Gist: With Break Point, Netflix has set out to introduce casual or non-viewers to the world of tennis by bringing them face-to-face with a fresh roster of top competitors. The first episode of the series follows controversial Australian player Nick Kyrgios, and subsequent episodes promise a deep roster including Matteo Berrettini, Ajla Tomljanovic, Maria Sakkari, Taylor Fritz, Paula Badosa, Ons Jabeur and more. This is real-time filmmaking, riding along with the players as they compete in Grand Slams and ATP and WTA events around the world, with competition footage interspersed with off-court interviews and personal-life segments.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In taking real-life competitors from an individual sport and repacking their exploits in a reality-show format, the obvious intent here is to replicate the gangbusters success of Netflix’s Drive To Survive, a project from the same production team.

Our Take: Tennis is facing down a star-power problem in the near future. Roger Federer has just retired, and Rafael Nadal seems not far behind his longtime rival. Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes of all time in any sport, but even she can’t play forever. The sport needs to capture the hearts and minds of a new generation of viewers, and they need to do it with a new generation of players. In an individual sport, it’s crucial that fans can find personalities they respond to, characters that they can care about.

Netflix found a solution to this problem in Formula One racing with the hugely-successful series Drive To Survive, a show whose success has caused the popularity of the traditionally-European motorsport to skyrocket in the United States, and now they’re running the same playbook for tennis with Break Point.

Over the course of ten episodes, they’re attempting to introduce viewers to fifteen tennis players, a mix of established near-stars and promising up-and-comers, in the hopes that they can do for one somewhat-inaccessible sport what they did for another.

The first episode of the series focuses almost entirely on Nick Kyrgios, and that choice isn’t surprising. The 27-year-old Australian has hovered near the top of the men’s world rankings for years, and faced off with Novak Djokovic in last year’s Wimbledon men’s final. He’s a brash, bold player with a fiery attitude and a foul mouth, and he’s known for driving his rivals, line judges and fans crazy.

Surprisingly, though he comes off with a fairly soft-focus approach in this episode; his on-court ferocity is shown and discussed, but there’s none of that in the off-court footage. The approach seems largely intended to soften Kyrgios’s bad-boy image, with little of the drama you might expect from a player of his reputation. That’s good for Kyrgios, perhaps, but leads to questions about what tone we’re going to see from future episodes of Break Point. Much of the success of Drive To Survive has lay in the cattiness of the competitors, the snarling and sniping and behind-the-back trash-talking of the big-personality drivers. Fans have been able to find drivers they love, but possibly more important, they’ve found drivers that they can love to hate.

It’s yet to be seen whether Break Point will be able to employ this same formula in tennis, a sport that’s by nature more polite and buttoned-up than the flash-and-crash world of motorsports, and features a much broader field of competitors. Some of these players may end up going head-to-head as the season rolls on, but it’s not the same pressure-cooker of racing each other every week. If this ends up being a series of soft-focus infomercials for individual players, it may end up falling flat for many viewers. Still, there’s ample reason to give the show time to find its footing. The production values are terrific, the pace is fast and well-edited, and the access is, of course, incomparable. There’s a lot to like in Break Point, but for everyone’s sake, we’re going to have to hope the rivalries start to flare sooner rather than later.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Nick Kyrgios celebrates on the court in Melbourne after winning the 2022 Australian Open men’s doubles title alongside Thanasi Kokkinakis. “I feel proud of everything I’ve overcome, that whole journey to get here,” Kyrgios states in a voiceover. “I’m here to show you that I’m one of the best players in the world.”

Sleeper Star: The pilot is almost all Nick Kyrgios, and he’s one of the biggest current stars on the roster. As other players roll out a couple at a time per episode, it’ll be interesting to see what lesser-known names rise to the top.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Love him or loathe him, you can’t take your eyes off the guy when he plays tennis,” one commentator reflects in a montage of similar statements from tennis media regarding Nick Kyrgios.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Break Point starts slow, but if the show can find some fire between its competitors, it has a good chance to replicate the success of Drive To Survive.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky who publishes the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.