“Clipped,” starting Tuesday on Hulu, is the latest gossipy sports docudrama, this time about the scandal involving former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was banned for life from the NBA in 2014 after a recording of his racist comments became public. Remember him? The woman who wore the face visor?
I’m not sure whether “Clipped” expects you to know the details of this story, but vague familiarity is inherent in its very existence: The show itself feels familiar because there’s a plethora of sports shows that have followed in the documentary and scripted footsteps of “O.J.: Made in America” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” and there’s been a surge in basketball stories, especially after “The Last Dance,” including the recent similar “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Sports-related series aside, “Clipped” also resembles other iconic podcast-to-TV shows like “Gaslit” or “The Dropout,” and has a ripped-from-the-headlines premise similar to “Pam & Tommy.” (Clipped is based on the ESPN 30 for 30 podcast “The Sterling Affairs.”)
“This story has a girl, a tape, sports, racism, money,” says a crisis public relations manager in Episode 5. “It has something for everybody.” Well! “Clipped” has all of these things, in fact, as well as strong, anchoring performances from Laurence Fishburne as Coach Doc Rivers, Cleopatra Coleman as V. Stiviano, Ed O’Neill as Sterling and Jacki Weaver as Shelly Sterling.
At the climax of the show, you can hear a coach reminding his players to focus on the fundamentals: volume, pitch, height, detailIt focuses on those aspects (and in some cases nails them – the manicures get a lot of screen time), giving everything an admirable, almost clean pace. The characters here are either smart, savvy, brilliant or ruthless, and they say exactly what they want to say. That’s rare in current dramas, which gives “Clipped” a refreshing clarity. But it can also seem a bit immature, and what the show gains in aerodynamics it loses in nuance and texture.
