Duplicating the format of Netflix’s hit Formula One documentary seriesDrive to Survive with a professional tennis variant was a tempting but ultimately flawed initiative.Break Point spends a year on the tennis circuit,starting at January 2022’s Australian Open,but it lacks a cohesive narrative as the featured players are focused on individual tournaments,not a single title. The instalments are self-contained:little spills over,not enough builds.

The assumption is you know little about tennis – “six games wins a set,” the first episode explains – and there’s little discussion of playing styles or tactics. The focus is the player’s personality and their brief self-analysis. “I lose my shit because of little things,” notes Nick Kyrgios in his episode,and the conversations are rote.Drive to Survive boasts the principals of each team,the charismatic equal of the drivers,but here there are mostly girlfriends and coaches offering reassurance.

Past greats such as Maria Sharapova contribute,while the slow-motion match footage and cinematic crowd shots create a sense of place,but these first five episodes (the final five are released in June) only feel intermittently engaging and rarely revelatory. Several of the players are intriguing personalities,such as the Tunisian Ons Jabeur,but once their big match is done they disappear into the stadium corridors.

The Bad Batch (season 2)
Disney+

Created by Dave Filoni (Star Wars Rebels,The Mandalorian),the most prolific voice inside the television strand of Lucasfilm,this animated offshoot of long-running seriesThe Clone Wars has a sturdy,practical bent as it follows a group of disavowed Clone troopers trying to shelter a clone child and stay one step ahead of the Empire. It’s a littleDirty Dozen,a little John Cassavetes’Gloria.Andor’s sustained brilliance has rewritten expectations for a live action Star Wars series,but on the animation front it’s still very much variations on a theme.

The Rig
Amazon Prime

John Carpenter’sThe Fog by way of 21st century labour and environmental inequality,this supernatural thriller about the trapped crew of a North Sea oil rig never quite escapes a boilerplate set-up and its familiar genre tropes. It does benefit from an accomplished cast,headlined by Iain Glen and Martin Compston,who provide a sense of authenticity and breaking point duress to the workers’ increasingly fearful struggle with inexplicable forces,but the six-episode limited series can never truly distinguish itself from a crowded field.

Treason
Netflix

Briskly outlandish as opposed to broodingly tense,this British espionage thriller barrels along through five comparatively succinct episodes – it’s aiming to end before you get either bored or start tugging on the story’s numerous loose stitches. It doesn’t quite make it,but Charlie Cox (Daredevil) is an offbeat and welcome choice as Adam Lawrence,a senior MI6 officer who takes command after his boss is poisoned,even though the suspect is his former lover,Russian spy Kara (Olga Kurylenko). It’s not a patch on Apple TV+’sSlow Horses.

Your Honor (season 2)
Stan*

This grim New Orleans crime drama took some mighty swings in its first season,whether it was casting Bryan Cranston in his first headline television role sinceBreaking Bad or trying to create a panoramic portrait of crime and punishment in a city controlled by factions and divided by race. The first season tied up the story of a judge (Cranston) and a crime boss (Michael Stuhlbarg) intertwined by the actions of their sons in emotional terms,but it’s the new episodes that do the more difficult narrative work. The show is straining,but it has entertaining diversions – Hope Davis’s gangster matriarch is wildly unhinged.

* Stan is owned by Nine,the owner of this masthead.

Find out the next TV,streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees.Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.