For a dozen years, Starz has been home to one of the more under-examined dynasties in television. Power arrived in 2014 alongside the hit pirate drama Black Sails, heralding what would be a brief-yet-brilliant expansion in original programming for the pay-cable channel. This would prove to be short-lived, but the mini-empires launched by Power and the more widely-covered time-travel romance Outlander survive to this day, the two remaining pillars of a leaner, less ambitious Starz.
While never a ratings juggernaut, Power‘s long life—with three spin-offs after the original series’ six-season run and two more on the way—has resulted in the sort of franchise sprawl that usually comes with some sort of pre-existing IP and a significant amount of money. Instead, Starz’ answer to The Walking Dead or Game Of Thrones mostly just had Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as its producer and occasional star, an original script from creator Courtney A. Kemp (whose Nemesis just kicked off at Netflix this year and is already greenlit for season 2), and a commitment to making a show by and about people of color. Perhaps that commitment is key to the franchise’s longevity.
Fightland feels like an attempt to get another Power off the ground, a sturdy crime soap built to last as long as everyone is game to play ball, and perhaps fuel a few spin-offs too. Similarly produced by Jackson, whose name (and rapping over the theme song) provides a sense of continuity between series. Otherwise, Fightland looks to immediately distance itself by leaping across the pond, for a revenge story set in the semi-criminal world of boxing and the fully criminal world of London’s drug trade.
The story begins with a classic The Count Of Monte Cristo setup. British prizefighter Maduka “Duke” Kilroy (Howard Charles) has everything: He’s the star fighter in a roster promoted by gangster Kingsley Marshall (Nicholas Pinnock), which has brought him fame, money, and women. It also, unbeknownst to him, made him enemies—so when an assault results in the death of Duke’s brother and Duke beating one of the assailants to death, he loses it all. After eight years in a Nevada prison, a cartel boss on the inside tells Duke that he was set up by Kingsley, and offers him a way back to London if he can take down the Marshalls from within. With only revenge to live for, Duke accepts.
All of this would be cooler if anyone on Fightland—just one person, really, it doesn’t have to be Duke—popped off the screen with any charisma. Instead, the cast is serviceable; Charles keeps Duke’s rage at a low simmer and goes about most of his character’s subterfuge in the shadows. This is not entirely the actor’s fault—the scripts demand that Duke remain a stoic presence and man of action, mostly letting everyone’s greed get the better of them. There’s also the fact that he’s at sea because his primary target, Kingsley, is missing.
While the start is undeniably slow, Fightland wisely sets up multiple vectors for its soap operatics—like the Marshall boxing promotion, which is less of a front and more a co-equal branch of the family’s criminal enterprise. There’s also the drug game, naturally, and the palace intrigue running through both, what with Kingsley absent and his adult children, Zeke (Charles Babalola) and Cebella (Anita-Joy Uwajeh) squabbling over the direction to take their father’s ventures. Despite being aligned with the cartel on taking Kingsley out, Duke is also under its thumb, and its members keep tabs on him and pushes him to act before he’s ready. And then there’s the interpersonal who-can-you-trust drama that comes naturally to stories of naked ambition, as Duke wonders what kind of life he even wants anymore, and everyone sleeps with the enemy as the enemy sleeps with them.
Thanks to all these avenues for conflict, the show’s initially relaxed pace begins to pick up momentum rather quickly, and the machine Fightland co-creators Daniel Fajemisin Duncan and Marlon Smith have built starts humming along. The show is admirably willing to use every tool in its kit—it is equally interested in boxing, in gang warfare, and in being a frothy soap. When it’s time for action, Fightland can throw down—nowhere near as good as Gangs Of London‘s early, showstopping violence, but definitely punching above its weight class, and usually with fights that complicate character or plot. It tangles its ongoing threads and characters up so much that if you give yourself over to it, a single plot twist from a thread you forgot about can be energizing.
Fightland‘s strengths don’t necessarily outweigh its weaknesses—again, it’s hard to imagine a single character becoming anyone’s favorite—but its fundamentals are solid enough that future seasons could be a dramatic improvement on season one. On a streamer, this would be a death sentence, but on Starz, a network hungry for a new show to build on as its two biggest franchises amble into their second decades, it’s a foundation. (It also helps that the show is a co-production with the U.K.’s Sky Atlantic.) And, like Power, Fightland is interested in offering something that is still woefully lacking in the pay-cable space: a premium drama that centers Black characters and creatives, but in a story that’s not expressly about race.
To put it in boxing terms, Fightland isn’t the most exciting guy in the ring. It’s not the fastest, nor the strongest, and its reach is modest at best. You might have a better time watching someone else. But the show may also have that Rocky Balboa/Adonis Creed quality: Not out to win, but to go the distance.
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