'Running Point' review: Kate Hudson stars in mildly enjoyable sports comedy

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The dysfunctional inner workings of an NBA franchise serve as the fodder for "Running Point," a comedy series starring Kate Hudson and arriving on Netflix from co-creator Mindy Kaling.

The fictional Los Angeles Waves have been owned by the Gordon family for years. After the death of the domineering patriarch, they have become the purview of his four children. 

We enter into their lives in a moment of transition: Cam (Justin Theroux) is stepping down as president of basketball operations to combat a drug problem. Instead of naming brothers Sandy (Drew Tarver, "The Other Two"), the team's chief financial officer, or Ness (Scott MacArthur), as his replacement, Cam turns to the most qualified and intelligent sibling of all: sister Isla (Hudson).

The 10-episode series is inspired by the Los Angeles Lakers and co-executive produced by its controlling owner and president Jeanie Buss. Co-stars include Brenda Song as Isla's best friend and the team's chief of staff and Chet Hanks (Tom's son) as a troubled star player.

MY SAY "Running Point" occupies strange middle ground, finding itself somewhere between a straight sitcom and a thoughtful satire.

The sitcom touches manifest in thinly plotted episodes that rely on storylines that don't go anywhere. Isla is pressured to do a TV deal with other big-market franchises; Ness has to sleep on his brother's couch after his wife throws him out because he won't get off his phone. The writing isn't strong enough to elevate the material beyond this sort of basic fodder, with conflicts that come and go as the show hits the same concise beats we expect from this sort of television.

But a viewing of the first five episodes suggests some promise on the other side of the equation. The show offers some genuinely amusing insight into the world of professional basketball front offices, showing how even in this high-powered environment, no one is immune from the same basic foibles that impact the rest of us.

That's a credit, surely, to Buss and her influence, as well as Kaling's sharply honed eye for workplace comedy given her past on "The Office" and "The Mindy Project."

The actors recognize the underlying conceit and draw it out smartly. Isla is the only one of the siblings who fundamentally knows what she's doing, but she's vulnerable to rash decisions, to moments of self-doubt, and to many other familiar failings. Of course, she has to climb an ever-larger hill to prove herself, too, in a male-dominated business.

Hudson packages all of this by balancing moments of broad comedy with the real sense of a person working hard to be taken seriously.

The supporting cast leans heavily into the absurdism, with Tarver and MacArthur relishing the chance to play whiny nepotism cases, Hanks bringing weird energy to his every scene and Song enlivening even the flattest of moments.

They're simply undercut by the episodic plotting and the inescapable sense that the series would have benefited from some reconceiving.

BOTTOM LINE It's a mildly enjoyable sports comedy that could have been more.