Revealing sports biographies debut
Three very different tales of young athletic talent debut today.
Streaming on Amazon’s free platform Freevee, “Rowdy” profiles NASCAR sensation Kyle Busch. The younger brother of racer Kurt Busch, Kyle had his professional driving debut at 13 and demonstrated a precocity behind the wheel that astounded an industry. Like his older sibling, he also had a brash confidence and single-minded focus on winning that some interpreted as boo-worthy arrogance.
A champion at a young age and surrounded by corporate sponsors and a flawless wife, Busch projects the certainty of someone who has never harbored doubts, had second thoughts or devoted any time to reflection. And he seems to symbolize a corporate sports culture that has no time or tolerance for such complications.
“Stand” (9 p.m., Showtime, TV-MA) profiles another prodigy, NBA star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
Born poor on the wrong side of the tracks of Gulfport, Mississippi, he never knew his father and suffered from seizures, Tourette’s and signs of OCD from an early age. He channeled his tics and drive for perfection into his basketball game, turning himself into a shot-making machine.
Taunted for his afflictions, he would run into bigger problems when, as an NBA player, he embraced Islam and refused to stand for the national anthem in the mid-1990s. Two full decades before Colin Kaepernick, his statement of conscience would unravel his professional career.
Another tale of young talent, the scripted movie “True Spirit” (Netflix) recalls an Australian teen who set out to become the youngest woman to sail solo around the globe.
› Apple TV+ debuts “Dear Edward,” a dramatic series adapted from a best-selling novel by Ann Napolitano. The pilot episode is directed by Fisher Stevens.
A tale of loss, grief and survival, “Dear Edward” uses overlapping flashbacks to introduce passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles as well as their friends, family and professional colleagues.
There’s an immigrant from Ghana flying to audition for a major part in a Hollywood movie, an esteemed congresswoman taken to the airport by her activist granddaughter, a television screenwriter dragging her husband and two precocious sons away from their comfortable Manhattan home and the overworked husband of an insecure shopaholic.
It’s difficult to write about “Dear” without revealing too much, except it’s sufficient to say that it continues in the dubious Hollywood tradition of using a shocking event to underline big statements about shared humanity. (Think “Crash” or “Grand Canyon”).
To call “Dear Edward” emotionally loaded is an understatement. It has the feel of an overwrought network drama of an earlier time. Most of the characters exude a kind of exalted nature.