We like Carson Shaw from the moment we meet her.
That moment is in 1943, in Lake Valley, Idaho, as Abbi Jacobson’s character in “A League of Their Own” — a largely entertaining series debuting this week on Prime Video — is running for a train, bags in her hands. A mess from a fall, she throws her luggage at a man working on the now-moving train who tells her it’s too late for her to board. Nonetheless, she soon jumps aboard to head for a grand adventure.
And, hey, she’s not gonna let the fact that she didn’t have time to buy a ticket stop her.
Carson — like other women across the country at a time when many men, some of their husbands included, are fighting in a war overseas — is bound for Chicago. There, the ladies will try out for the inaugural season of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Yes, this show shares the name of the 1992 sports comedy-drama directed by Penny Marshall and featuring memorable performances by, among others Geena Davis, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty and Tom Hanks.
Although the eight-episode season boasts myriad welcome nods to the movie — there’s a memorable peeing scene and, of course, there IS “crying in baseball” — and follows a fictional version of the league’s Rockford Peaches, it is a different fictional version of the team from the film’s. As a result, you’re really never waiting for this or that to happen.
And that’s only one of the things this hourlong show has going for it.
Its list of strengths begins with Jacobson, the former “Broad City” star and co-creator. Not only is she a joy as Carson — a character who is at times strong and determined, at others vulnerable and unsure of herself and serves to ground the show — but she has co-created and written much of the season with Will Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle,” “Alpha House”).
In the first episode, “Batter Up,” Carson meets two women in Chicago who also are on their way to tryouts, longtime pals Greta (D’Arcy Carden) and Jo (Melanie Field), and we are right to suspect the three will become teammates in Rockford, Illinois.
At the tryouts, we also are introduced to another pair of longtime friends, Max (Chante Adams of “A Journal for Jordan”) and Clance (Gbemisola Ikumelo), who have taken a train to Chicago from Rockford so Max can audition for a spot as a pitcher. She’s got great stuff, but she doesn’t even get to show it to the men putting together the league because she Black. However, many there, including Carson, take notice as she rockets a ball into the air out of anger before leaving as instructed.
“League” presents parallel storylines once all the key characters are situated in Rockford, with Carson, Greta, Joe and their teammates working to become a successful team and Max trying to find any way she can to play the sport she loves. (Clance, meanwhile, deals with her own, non-baseball-related issues.)
Know, though, that as much as “A League of Their Own” is a story about baseball, it also is an examination of the difficulties faced by anyone at that time in the United States attracted to a member of the same sex.
Max not only hides her desire for other women from her overbearing mother, Toni (Saidah Arrika Ekulona), but even from Clance.
Meanwhile, the married Carson initially fights an attraction to the confident, flirtatious Greta, but she gives in to her wants sooner than later, the two beginning a highly secretive tryst.
While Max, Carson and Greta try to hide their truths from people such as Toni and uptight Peaches player Shirley (Kate Berlant), the real dangers are the league or, worse, the authorities learning about the sexual orientations of many of the women in this story. This really hits home in the strongest episode, “Stealing Home,” its sixth, directed by Graham.
Living in the same city, Max and Carson develop a friendship and share a few scenes together that help cement the themes the show is addressing. Unfortunately, though, these moments feel a little tacked on. More time with the two together could have made the two storylines feel less disjointed and more than thematically connected.
“A League of Their Own” starts out strong with “Batter Up” and two subsequent installments directed by one of its executive producers, Jamie Babbit, before losing a little steam in the middle. Its storytelling starts and stalls, and it spends too little time developing secondary characters such as Peaches Jess (Kelly McCormack), Maybelle (Molly Ephraim) and Esti (Priscilla Delgado), a young girl who speaks only Spanish.
It does better with Lupe (Roberta Colindrez), the Peaches’ fiery starting pitcher who isn’t all that interested in serving as Esti’s translator but who does jump at every chance to butt heads with Carson, especially after the latter’s status with the team changes.
The always-enjoyable Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation,” “Pam & Tommy”) elevates the show here and there as Dove, the team’s manager. Like Hanks’ Jimmy Dugan from the film, Dove is a former Major League ballplayer, but, refreshingly, the characters’ differences outweigh their similarities.
If there’s anyone else deserving of a round of applause, it’s Carden, who was terrific on the inventive NBC sitcom “The Good Place.” The comedically gifted actress simply brings a little juice to any moment when she’s on the screen.
Although it has much more on its mind than sports, “League,” does, of course, lead up to a big match in the season finale, “Perfect Game.” And as with the movie, by this point a friend is on the rival team, with Jacobson and Graham coming up with a rather creative way to end the game and the inaugural season. (Maybe have a tissue at the ready, if you’re the type who tends to need one when the emotional dial gets turned up.)
“A League of Their Own” misses the strike zone and leaves runners on base a little more often than you’d like, but it most definitely leaves you wanting another season of the show — and for the Rockford Peaches.
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‘A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN’
How to watch: On Prime Video Friday
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