In recent years, we’ve grown used to seeing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson jump into things feat first. On-screen, he’s a trailblazer and eyebrow-raiser, dominating action movies in a glistening sweat that makes him shimmer like a golden god. The rigorous training regime required to maintain his sculpted bulk apparently now includes rip curls of tired franchises – Johnson has effortlessly powerlifted GI Joe and those Fast/Furious movies out of the box office doldrums. No wonder he was tapped to play Hercules. The Rock seems more than capable of performing 12 astonishing labours before the first of his many gigantic, protein-packed breakfasts.
But now the almighty Johnson faces perhaps his trickiest challenge yet: selling a TV show about American football to the UK. It’s a sport that in this country remains an arcane, ritualised mystery to all but the most dedicated players of John Madden on Sega Megadrive. As HBO’s Ballers makes its debut on Sky Atlantic tonight, you wonder if the channel considered hiring the redoubtable Gary Imlach to help quarterback any localisation required. For a certain generation, Imlach is the personification of American football in the UK after his many late shifts wrangling Superbowl coverage on Channel 4. You can picture him providing a calm, wry, play-by-play explanation of exactly what all these running blocks and line-behinders are talking about on Ballers, like an in-vision sign language interpreter.
Luckily, as you might have gathered from the title, Ballers is a little less concerned with simulating the remarkable, almost balletic execution of successful American football play – a strange mix of clockwork planning and improvisational skill by top-flight athletes – as it is with using the moneybags milieu of the NFL as a glamorous backdrop for frictionless bro capers. Sound familiar? Johnson and Mark Wahlberg must have bonded while co-starring in Michael Bay’s lurid roid rage caper Pain and Gain, as the former Funky Bunch CEO exec-produces Ballers. It also bears more than a passing similarity to Entourage, Wahlberg’s previous HBO project: a premium cocktail of hanging dudes, conspicuous consumption, supercars with complicated doors and VIP bottle service in high-end nightclubs staffed exclusively by exotic, available, depressingly underwritten women.
Johnson plays Spencer Strasmore, a Miami-based former NFL star a year into retirement, attempting to reinvent himself as a financial adviser to younger players. He has the access, and he certainly looks the part, cramming his enormous bod into a series of immaculate suits that have had to be let out considerably around the shoulders. Prospective clients include a wayward wide receiver in the volatile Dennis Rodman mould and a superstar defensive tackle being financially sucked dry by his high-living family and entourage. Strasmore’s mercenary line manager, Joe, played by exuberant douchebag specialist Rob Corddry, constantly browbeats him into “monetising friendships”, although it requires a certain suspension of disbelief that The Rock to accept could be effectively bullied by anyone, let alone a skinny, bald, white dude.
Strasmore knows from hard-won experience that life after the NFL is tough, so attempting to convince lionised players who luxuriate in bling to consider their affairs soberly in preparation for retirement seems like a moral imperative. But, by then, claiming his percentage to help to pay for those tailored suits, is he really much more than a parasite? That tiny bit of grit gives Ballers just enough necessary roughness to make it more than just the endzone Entourage. If you’re a genuine American football fan, you may even recognise some of the cameos. And in the margins, there’s a mini West Wing reunion going down, with Dulé Hill sashaying through the series as the smooth general manager of the Miami Dolphins and Richard Schiff grumping it up as the entitled billionaire boss of Strasmore’s financial firm.
It’s also just a chance to luxuriate in the screen company of The Rock, who gets to be charming, drop some F-bombs and occasionally go full Jerry Maguire. (It’s just a shame no-one ever says: “Hey, big Spencer!” when he arrives at the club/yacht/pool party.) That Johnson can actually act shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. While Ballers came trailed as the movie star’s first starring TV role, that was to conveniently forget the years he spent performing live in front of a rabid audience, in the round with nowhere to hide, as part of his long WWE career headlining pay-per-views and grafting week in, week out on shows such as Raw and SmackDown. While many Ballers storylines struggle to be as compelling, you simply can’t take your eyes off Johnson – and that’s only partly because he physically takes up so much of the frame of every scene he’s in.
Ballers, Sky Atlantic, Tuesdays, 10pm
