You know that it can’t be as simple as it first appears. But it does seem that way for an impressively long time as the story of Fifteen-Love begins. Aidan Turner plays professional tennis coach Glenn Lapthorn who is accused of sexual abuse by his former protege Justine Pearce (Ella Lily Hyland, in her first major screen role), five years after she suffered a career-ending injury just as they were both about to break into the sporting big time. The opening scenes show her at 17, just before what will turn out to be her last match, kissing him and him pushing her away, wiping his mouth in horror – “We talked about this!”
For most of the opening episode it looks as if this is a case of a hormonal teenager overcome by unavoidable daily close proximity to a handsome man with whom, in the way of elite athletes and their coaches, she also has an equally unavoidably intense mental relationship. After the kiss, we cut to five years later when Justine has become a physiotherapist at her former training academy, and is given to taking male clients’ minds off their pain as she works, by analysing the psychology behind women’s rape fantasises for them. Is this the hypersexualisation of someone abused in their teens? Or just a hyper-confident young woman not over-committed to her job or its boundaries? Either way, it is the beginning of an absolutely superlative performance by Hyland, who holds the many facets of her character (courtesy of a rigorous script by Hania Elkington) in perfect tension. She is dislikable, vulnerable, grief-stricken, a case of forced maturity and arrested development at the same time and mesmerising throughout.
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