Two soapy new dramas about female athletes, USA’s “Dare Me” and Netflix’s “Spinning Out,” premiered within days of each other at the turn of the new year.
It would be great to report that women finally have their own “Friday Night Lights” or “The White Shadow,” or that these shows reflect the soccer fever that gripped the United States during the past summer’s Women’s World Cup. But like so much previous content about young women athletes, “Dare Me” and “Spinning” involve skirts and dance elements rather than cleats and baggy shorts.
In “Dare Me” (10 p.m. Sundays), Herizen Guardiola and Marlo Kelly play high school cheerleaders Addy and Beth, whose longtime friendship is tested by the arrival of a hotshot coach (Willa Fitzgerald) to their small Rust Belt town.
“Spinning” focuses on Kat (Kaya Scodelario), a 21-year-old Olympic skating hopeful struggling with a fear of the ice after a terrible fall, and living with bipolar disorder. Her mother, Carol (January Jones of “Mad Men”), gave up her own skating dreams when she got pregnant. Carol also is bipolar but unlike her daughter does not stick to her meds. Evan Roderick plays bad-boy skater Justin, with whom Kat teams in a bid to remake herself as a pairs competitor.
Cheerleading and skating already have been explored so thoroughly onscreen that high marks exist for cheer competition films (“Bring It On”) and melodramas (HBO’s “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom”) and for stories of skaters single (“I, Tonya”) and pair (“The Cutting Edge”).
It is easy to see why content creators are drawn to cheerleading and skating. Nearly all stories about female athletes, from “A League of Their Own” to “Million Dollar Baby,” explore the tension between athletic grit and traditional ideas of femininity. Cheerleading and skating can double and triple-toe loop this tension with demands of cosmetic as well as athletic perfection.
On the first episode of “Dare Me,” the new coach points to a cheerleader’s slightly protruding belly, in front of the whole team, and tells her it won’t do. Addy and Beth need no such prodding, judging by how they spit their chewed food into napkins with a casualness suggesting years of practice. On “Spinning,” Jones’ carb-policing mom strenuously objects to her younger skater daughter’s (Willow Shields) attempt to eat a muffin.
But both shows, created by women (Megan Abbott executive-produces “Dare Me,” based on her 2004 novel, with Gina Fattore; veteran TV writer Samantha Stratton created “Spinning”) are thankfully free of titillating elements, visually emphasizing athleticism over beauty.
The cameras in “Dare Me” highlight the strength, and engineering skills, required to keep a “top girl” from tumbling off a human pyramid. In “Spinning,” Scodelario and Roderick look powerful and graceful on the ice. The transitions from actors to stunt doubles in both shows are so seamless as to be nearly undetectable.
“Spinning” nails the storytelling compulsories more often than “Dare Me” does — or at least the episodes of “Dare” that have aired so far. Scodelario (“Skins,” “The Maze Runner”), who plays Kat as physically powerful and emotionally raw, is exceptionally sympathetic as a young woman who grew up poor in a rich ski town with a stage mom who is equal parts her biggest champion and the literal voice of doubt in her ear.
Playing a woman whose moods shift abruptly tests Jones’ range, but Scodelario plays Kat as so attuned to Carol’s health that she knows when Carol’s outbursts are not really her, but her illness. Scodelario emanates such compassion and empathy at these moments that your heart goes out to both characters.
Scodelario also shares great chemistry with Roderick, who lends enough nuance to Justin that he comes off as that most unusual of screen characters: a spoiled rich bro of substance.
“Spinning” has trouble balancing sensitive depictions of mental illness with showy cameos by skater-broadcaster Johnny Weir and “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness. But it ultimately settles into a tone that can incorporate both elements. It helps that Kat eventually gets to smile a bit.
Beth, the head cheerleader whose dominance is threatened by the new coach in “Dare,” rarely smiles sincerely. With her smirks, scowls and overall unmitigated surliness, Kelly pierces the series’ “Euphoria”-esque fuzz-noir visual style to let us know there is danger coming in “Dare,” which is billed as a thriller.
In the meantime, the show’s first two episodes try to stoke a small-town “Friday Night Lights” feel (“Lights” executive producer Peter Berg also produces here) that never quite takes. People even call the coach’s husband “Mr. Coach,” and the town’s deep-pocketed top sports booster — the Buddy Garrity of the piece — suggests he gave the husband a job only to attract the coach to town. Because depressed Rust Belt towns so often hang their futures on cheerleading.
Dismissing cheerleading as less serious than soccer or basketball is its own kind of snobbery. Is kicking a ball or shooting one into a hoop an inherently less silly activity than doing somersaults? No, but the overcompensating attempts of “Dare Me” to elevate its sport only serve to underscore how its elite athlete characters spend their Friday nights: cheering for boys from the sidelines.
“Dare Me” airs at 10 p.m. Sundays on USA and is streaming on the USA app. “Spinning Out” is streaming on Netflix.
