Two Limited Series are up for your consideration today. Fleishman Is In Trouble is the dramatization of a well-received novel from four years ago, while Break Point is a smart documentary series on the future of pro tennis.

Fleishman Is In Trouble (Disney +) - Based on the popular and critically acclaimed novel of Taffy Brodesser-Akner, which was released in 2019, the Limited series is 8 episodes of well-plotted and well-acted drama/comedy. Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) is your recently divorced 41-year old, and father of two, who dives headlong into the world app-based dating. As a doctor in a Manhattan hospital, he’s more than a catch for a bevy of women looking for a new man in their lives, and from the outset, we’re made aware of just how much Toby is looking forward to the kind of dating success he never enjoyed back when he was in med school and got married relatively early. Of course, things will never turn out the way we expect them to.

Without warning, his ex-wife Rachel (Clare Danes) does a Me Time disappearing act and leaves him with the two kids - the 11-year old Hannah, and 9-year old Solly. What the series then explores is the Why’s of Rachel’s disappearing, how Toby copes and balances this new life thrust onto him, and what it’ll take to find some satisfactory resolution. It’s very much about relationship navel-gazing, domestic crises, and an updated New York look at the upwardly mobile, professional class late 30s early 40s set. If you’re fascinated by this demographic, you will absolutely love the series and how it plays out in Woody Allen-style. If however, you find the ones who inhabit this set of Manhattanites entitled, self-indulgent, and too neurotic, than be forewarned that this series meanders and will try your patience.

Break Point (Netflix) - Just in time for the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the calendar year, we have this Limited Series that ostensibly puts itself forward as a chronicling of the young guns of the pro tour. What that translates to for those who don’t religiously follow pro tennis, is looking for the next big thing in tennis after Federer, Nadal and Djokovic; and Serena Williams. It’s an approach that has been in the works for something like five years now, and it’s really only been the one off slams won by Danil Medvedev, Dominic Thiem, and Carlos Alcaraz-Garfia that have broken the vise grip held by the Big Three. When you put that into context, it’s like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack and presenting a list of pretenders, while acknowledging that until Djokovic and Nadal retire, we can’t say anything with certainty (Federer and Williams hung up their rackets last year).

The main players featured in the first part of the documentary series include Felix Auger-Aliassime, Nick Kyrgios, Paula Badosa, Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud, Maria Sakkari, Matteo Berrettini, Ons Jabeur, Frances Tiafoe, among others. And yes, it’s a well put docuseries that tries to take is up close to these players and find out what makes them tick. It’s much more an open field when it comes to the Ladies’ game, so you feel that along with the retirement of Barty last year, someone from the women featured, along with Iga Swiatek, will truly be dominating in the years to come. As for the Men, it’s difficult to gauge who will truly be the household name after the legacy produced by the Big Three. And what the docuseries implies is that we really have been witnesses to greatness of a different order with that troika.