This ABC biopic of a homegrown tennis champ is a smash, with a backhanded serve of fury
Goolagong ★★★★
If you were to judge this three-part drama about Australian tennis champion Evonne Goolagong on the merits of its sporting sequences, you’d find much to fault. The tennis is … well, genteel. The atmosphere at what are supposed to be some of the biggest games on the planet is church-mouse quiet. The athleticism barely rises above the level of gentle workout.
But if you were to assess it as a biopic about an exceptional woman who rose from the humblest of origins to attain the highest of accolades in her chosen field (seven grand slam singles titles), it’s a smash.
Lila McGuire as Evonne Goolagong in the ABC series Goolagong.Credit: ABC
Presumably for budgetary reasons, it trades wide shot for close crop, stadium for bedroom and dressing room. But in doing so, it takes us closer to the heart of the woman.
We first meet Evonne as a child of five or so (played by Eloise Hart with an abundance of unaffected charm) as she and her family are moving into their first home. It’s a weatherboard shack in a dirt-poor pocket of regional NSW, but at least it’s theirs, and the kids are relatively safe from the threat of being whisked away to the Mission.
Young Evonne has natural felicity with a tennis racquet, which is first spotted by a coach at the local clay court. Years later, he invites Vic Edwards (Marton Csokas), a coach from Sydney, to check out the teenage player, and Edwards is impressed enough to offer to train her properly. She’ll have to move to Sydney, though, to board with him and his family. She may have dodged the Mish, but she’s being separated from her family all the same.
Eloise Hart plays Evonne as a child.Credit: ABC
In a sense, Goolagong is the story not just of its subject, but of the three men who most profoundly influenced her career and her life. First, her father, Kenny (Luke Carroll), who believed in her, encouraged her, and urged her to follow her dream. Second, Edwards, who spotted her raw talent, helped develop it, pushed her to become the best player she could – but also, on this telling, manipulated her, controlled her financially and emotionally and sexually harassed her (the show treads lightly here, but the implication is clear). And finally, Roger Cawley (Felix Mallard), the former British junior tennis player to whom she has been married since 1975.
None of that, though, is to detract from the core portrait: Lila McGuire as the adult Goolagong. Hers is a tremendous performance, and the woman who emerges is admirably, but understatedly, complex. She is steely yet soft, innocent but not naive, determined but not fanatical.
