Set in 1980s Hollywood, Winning Time doesn’t just borrow from the decade, it imbibes it in its very fiber. It’s dizzyingly fast-paced and dazzlingly glamorous, pulling out all the stops from the cinematography, which employs a hybrid of film and tube camera, to the all-star cast, which includes Sally Field, Adrien Brody, and Jason Segel. It’s a technical feat, but amazingly, it also excels as a character study for Lakers legends Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes), as well as the team’s charismatic owner, Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly). The writers go in-depth into their histories and weave a story so gripping, you can’t help but binge all 10 episodes in one go (and research the truth right after). If you’re an NBA fan, you might be disappointed to know that a big chunk of the script doesn’t adhere to real events, but you will no doubt be delighted to watch basketball in the way it was intended to be watched: riveting and nail-biting, with a lot of drama and glamor to match.
"Once you get hooked into the story of how a struggling team reinvented itself and the NBA experience, you may find it hard to look away, even though its pleasures run more surface level than deep."
— Jen Chaney
"For sports fans (especially Lakers devotees), the 10-episode first season’s unapologetically biased depiction of building a dynasty through near-catastrophic obsession should carry weight. For everyone else, it still puts on a show."
— Ben Travers
A fast-break series chronicling the professional and personal lives of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of sports’ most revered and dominant dynasties — a team that defined an era, both on and off the court.
Winning Time tells the story of how the Los Angeles Lakers became the winning machine and pop culture behemoth it is today.
The cinematography. The format frequently switches from 35mm to 8mm to (most amusingly) an Ikegami tube camera, and in lesser hands, this would’ve been jarring and annoying, but here it felt extremely pleasing and true to the era. The use of Ikegami seemed like an especially inspired move—it was the leading camera in 80s TV after all, and unlike film grain, it’s not something you often see in modern productions. I won’t be surprised to see more of it in other shows. Relying on this hybrid look was risky (not to mention expensive) but the beautiful result proves that it was worth it.
Like a great game of ball, Winning Time is fast-paced, gripping, and endlessly entertaining.
