When you're constantly trying to cement your place atop the pile of the best streaming services on the market, in a brutal war to retain subscribers, sometimes you need new series that offer broad appeal, rather than just niche indie hits. That would certainly be the rationale I'd assume on Netflix's behalf when it comes to Running Point.
The new show, which recently got its first full trailer and will drop on Netflix on 27 February, in a couple of weeks' time, looks like an all-family comedy, with elements that should appeal to a wide range of audiences. It has slapstick comedy and workplace drama, but also is grounded in the world of elite sports, to make things stick.
In fact, in its story of an unassuming person taking charge of a huge sporting institution, it rings more than a little like Apple TV+'s hit Ted Lasso, although the comparison doesn't hold that much water. For one thing, Running Point is set in LA against the backdrop of the NBA, and it has much less of a fish-out-of-water theme.
The show will see Kate Hudson play Isla Gordon, the odd fish of a family that owns the biggest NBA team in the region, the LA Waves (clearly a stand-in for the real-world Lakers). When an accident befalls another family member, she's named as the person to lead the franchise, despite the wishes of her cantankerous brothers.
As a woman in a hugely male-dominated sector, expect plenty of fireworks as she pushes back against patriarchal norms, but this is a comedy series (from Mindy Kaling, no less), so it should all be light-hearted. There will clearly also be some romantic sub-plots, not least between Isla and her franchise's hunky head coach, even as his on-field performance takes a nosedive.
Of course, this sort of crowd-pleasing series can go one of two ways, and we won't really get a sense of how well it's written until it arrives. It could be a bit lightweight, but the last few decades have repeatedly proven that hit comedy series don't need to be serious to find potentially massive audiences. Netflix will certainly be hoping that Running Point can manage that.
