Alexandra Brodski favours close-ups, restless camerawork and room for actors to play broadly. We rate the confidence she helps sustain in Rivals, while keeping in mind how much of that pleasure belongs to a shared directing effort.
Fi1m perspective
The naked tennis in Rivals (2024) works because the scene treats its absurdity seriously enough to let the joke last. We laughed because nobody seemed embarrassed by what they were asking us to watch. Alexandra Brodski shares the directing credit with Elliot Hegarty, Jamie Jay Johnson and Dee Koppang O’Leary, and we credited all four with sustaining that confidence. She directed episodes six and eight.
The programme gives its ensemble permission to play broadly, with David Tennant among the reasons we recommend it. Its willingness to be an adult soap matters: the actors understand how seriously to take the nonsense. The crowded plotting can become tiresome, and confident performances cannot cure that. Brodski’s contribution is to a programme that is generally happier when it allows the cast to be expansive, and we would rather have that excess than see the sexual comedy handled coyly.
Her path into television runs from shorts, including Joy (2021), to the final four episodes of Somewhere Boy (2022). The shift from directing later episodes to setting the tone from the start comes with Half Man (2026), Richard Gadd’s series, for which she is lead director on the opening three episodes. There she handles the central teenage relationship. That offers a clearer opportunity to consider her individual choices than a programme whose comic confidence belongs to several directors.
Her approach favours handheld camerawork, close-ups and rapid cutting, designed to make scenes feel physical and immediate. Extended rehearsals give the actors time to work through the shifting power between their characters. That emphasis on rehearsal fits what we value in Rivals: performers who know how far to push the material. We would be less persuaded by restless camerawork alone; keeping us anxious is no guarantee of keeping us interested. Start with Rivals, allowing for the crowded plotting and watching how much freedom the actors have. — Fi1m
Biography
Alexandra Brodski is a writer-director. Born in 1989 in Moscow, she trained at the National Film and Television School and is based in London.
She directed episodes 6 and 8 of the Disney+ series Rivals (2024). She served as lead director on the HBO/BBC series Half Man (2026), directing the first three episodes. Earlier, she directed the final four episodes of the Channel 4 drama Somewhere Boy (2022). Her short film Joy (2021) premiered at the BFI London Film Festival.
