Upon its 1992 release, A League of Their Own was an instant success. Penny Marshall’s fourth film in the director’s chair had a marquee cast of Tom Hanks, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and Geena Davis and earned critical acclaim, grossing over $132.4m worldwide. Its fictionalised take on the Second World War era of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – a league for white and white-passing women born out of desperation to keep America’s favourite pastime alive as men were drafted to war – was one of the first female-driven sports movies. However, it wasn’t perfect. Disregarding vital civil rights history, it whittled 60 years of racial segregation in baseball down to a 15-second sequence.
Thirty years later and Marshall’s neglect has opened a door for Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham’s (Mozart in the Jungle) new co-created eight-episode series, A League of Their Own. While their TV reimagining of the cult classic may lack the original’s megastar power, it certainly has a secret weapon of its own: 27-year-old Detroit-born actor Chanté Adams. Leading the thoughtfully crafted drama-comedy as rebellious queer Black woman Max Chapman, Adams proves essential to the reinterpretation’s expansion into race and sexuality that the original only alluded to.
