Summary
Howard Charles keeps Fightland grounded in its premiere, despite a lot of gangland theatrics and melodrama, creating enough intrigue for audiences to buy in.
Fightland is very 50 Cent-coded, which makes sense given his name is all over the marketing. Episode 1, wordily titled “The Only Round That Matters Is the Next One”, finds a boxer at the top of his game under the bright lights of Vegas being brought down a peg – or several – by an attack that leaves his hand broken and his brother, Calvin, dead. After returning to London following a prison sentence for beating one of his attackers to death, Duke Kilroy is broke, reputationally damaged, and traumatised – and also trying to bring down the operation of criminal boss Kingsley Marshall, his former promoter, from within.
The boxing, the excess, the flurries of brutality, the sort of scuzzy-sexy underworld vibe; as I say, it’s all very on-brand. And this premiere is largely about setting that tone more than anything else. It moves at quite a clip, introducing Duke as a champion prizefighter having a secret, ill-advised relationship with Joy Marshall, Kingsley’s wife, and then speedily detonates his entire life. His prison sentence is sped through quickly, and then he’s back in London a shadow of his former self, or at least that’s the impression he’s trying to give Joy, Cece, and Zeek, who are running Marshall Promotions in Kingley’s absence.
Kingsley’s absence isn’t explained to any great extent, but it’s mostly just an excuse to have his kids running the operation in his stead, their contrasting personalities providing Duke with different potential routes into the operation, but also multiple threats coming back at him in return. Duke’s having to play a part he can barely tolerate. His comeback in the ring is a way to justify him being kept around the drug operation, but he has to put up with an outrageous amount of disrespect from Cece and Zeek, the former seeing him as desperate, and the latter seeing him as a joke. Their respective treatment of Duke shines a light on their characters and personalities that the episode is moving too quickly to properly explore. Cece is a better, more calculated leader, but Zeek’s ego and eagerness to have someone of Duke’s former stature in a position of subservience to him also make him dangerous.
While he was inside, Duke was told by cartel boss Amado Rodriguez that it was Kingsley who ordered the attack on Duke that ultimately killed Cal, as revenge for Duke sleeping with Joy. Amado is helping Duke take down the organisation from within, but not without strings, so Duke’s facing threats from both sides. It’s all the suspense of an undercover crime drama with a bit of boxing action and some surprisingly layered family drama for good measure.
Fightland Episode 1 suggests that family drama might be the primary point of intrigue. Duke is living with his estranged father, Gazzer, in an apartment above his gym, and the only person who seems keen to see him, his friend Jay, is the first to get pulled into the complexities of his playing both sides. Joy also throws him a major loop, since she has an eight-year-old son who may or may not be his.
There’s obvious depth to Duke’s relationship with Joy that goes beyond just a fling, and Howard Charles is playing the former boxer in an interesting way. He’s clearly not a criminal mastermind, but he’s also not a raging thug, either. He’s trying to play the long game but occasionally makes an impulsive mistake that threatens his cover, so it makes the character interesting to follow.
There’s also the tension within the Marshall family, with Cece being the obvious brains behind the operation, but the more impulsive Zeek having to be its face for the sake of legitimacy, despite not being emotionally ready. It’s a lot going on at once, but it all works pretty well together.
This is the thing about Fightland, I think. It’s made of very familiar constituent parts, and it contains a lot of melodrama and gangland theatrics that could become tedious if handled improperly. But it’s anchored by solid performances, and there’s more than enough intrigue in the character dynamics to keep an audience invested for the time being. I just hope it’s able to sustain itself into the later rounds.
