Goolagong review – a lovely tribute to an Aboriginal tennis legend

She won seven grand slams, was ranked world No 1 and riled up Billie Jean King. But did this worthy yet syrupy drama really need to show her as a child hitting a ball against a wall with a plank of wood quite so many times?

Goolagong opens to the soulful strains of Ann Peebles proclaiming: “It’s your thing – do what you wanna do!” It feels a little on the nose as a way to soundtrack an inspirational sporting drama, as Australia’s Evonne Goolagong (played by Lila McGuire) steels herself for her first ever Wimbledon match. (For the uninitiated: not only was Goolagong the first Aboriginal player to compete in tennis’s most prestigious tournament, but she would go on to win the ladies’ singles title twice, in 1971 and 1980, plus a doubles win in 1974. She won seven grand slams in total and was – for a time – ranked world No 1.) This three-part drama from Australia’s ABC is sometimes saccharine, and the opening sequence of a teenage Evonne wandering starry-eyed through the corridors of the All England Club – portraits of former winners on the walls – feels heavy-handed. More difficult themes do come to the fore in time, but Goolagong is largely an unapologetic, flashback-heavy tribute to a sporting legend. It’s beautifully drawn, but do we really need to watch the primary school-aged Evonne (a cherubic Eloise Hart) hit a ball against a wall with a plank of wood this many times?!

Sadly, being a woman in sport – or maybe just a woman in the world – Goolagong would go on to apparently suffer financial abuse and sexual harassment at the hands of her coach, Vic Edwards. The contrast between those fluffier scenes and the unwanted advances of Marton Csokas’s slippery Edwards feels like a screeching handbrake turn. Not least because we see Edwards move Goolagong from her happy but impoverished Wiradjuri family in rural Barellan, New South Wales – with a population in the hundreds – into his family home in Sydney at 14, grooming her for sporting fame but also maybe just grooming her full stop. But – as uncomfortable as that segue is – it is her reality. “When it stops being fun, come home,” Evonne’s mother tells her, with more than a little foreshadowing on the part of the writers. Later, after family tragedy and chicanery on Edwards’s part, Evonne will echo those words, declaring that tennis is “not fun any more”, ruined by the selfishness of her mentor.

Goolagong aired on BBC Four and is on iPlayer now.