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REVIEW: The provocatively titled Fifteen-Love (now streaming on TVNZ+) opens at the semi-final stage of the 2018 French Open (portrayed onscreen as the Voltaire Cup).
Seventeen-year-old British sensation Justine Pearce’s (Irish newcomer Ella Lily Hyland) “shocking rise to stardom” his culminated in this career-making centre-court clash against hometown favourite Cecile Bisset. In the locker-room, coach Glen Lapthorn (Poldark’s Aidan Turner) tries to fire Justine up by reminding her that her heart is her best weapon.
“I thought that was my forehand,” she laughs, before channeling her adrenaline into a snog – an advance Lapthorn quickly backs away from, reminding her that “we’ve talked about this” and that they’re “better than good – we’re formidable” as a team.
Even so, as his pregnant partner arrives to sit alongside him in the box, a furrow clearly crosses Justine’s brow.
Once in the heat of battle though, she quickly forgets such frustrations, racing to an early lead. However, as the match progresses, so does the pain in her wrist. What they’d initially dismissed as a small amount of tendonitis, now feels like something far more serious.
While she eventually outlasts her opponent – it comes at a high cost.
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Justine Pearce (Ella Lily Hyland) was a tennis star on the rise until injury cut her career short.
Cut to five years later and beer pong is now far more Justine’s speed, as she fuels her nights out partying with the money earned as a physio at the prestigious Longwood Academy. A scar hints at the surgery required for the eventually diagnosed splintered scaphoid fracture – and it’s clear that the psychological damage of losing her sporting career hasn’t fully healed either.
So the sight of Lapthorn achieving their shared dream of winning the French Open – with another player – and his unexpected arrival at Longwood “to sprinkle a little stardust on his alma mater” by helping establish a lucrative partnership with a similar facility in Orlando, Florida understandably sends her into a tailspin.
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Co-writer of the hugely under-rated fantasy-infused tales The Innocents and The Essex Serpent, screenwriter Hania Elkington has here crafted an intriguing six-part relationship drama that certainly opens with plenty of promise.
Switching back-and-forth from a police interview and the events between Lapthorn re-entering Justine’s orbit and his detainment, there’s a certain amount of deviation between their accounts that keeps you gripped and unsure as to where the truth may lie.
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The return of former coach Glen Lapthorn (Aidan Turner) into her life reopens old wounds and trauma for Justine Pearce (Ella Lily Hyland).
While that’s nothing new for contemporary British drama – Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster, Vigil) and Joanne Froggatt (Liar, Angela Black) have built careers around similarly-themed fodder – Hyland and Turner do a terrific job of selling this premise through their undoubted chemistry and establishing the pair as complicated, flawed characters.
Yes, there are hints that melodrama may overtake Fifteen-Love’s more nuanced aspects, but the opening exchanges at least bode well for an entertaining – and potentially engrossing – watch.
Fifteen-Love is now available to stream on TVNZ+.
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