Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan writes crime drama around family, loyalty and recognisable London lives. We value that grounding, but Fightland exposes a weakness: adding complications is little help when the reasons people act remain unclear.
Fi1m perspective
In Fightland (2026), the boxing keeps making way for gangsters who are less interesting than the sport. Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan and his long-term writing partner, Marlon Smith, mix crime with soap-opera complications, but give the fights too little weight. We were frustrated by the series because its characters’ unclear motives made the mounting trouble difficult to care about. Howard Charles and Anita-Joy Uwajeh provide worthwhile performances without solving that problem. It leaves us interested in what these writers might do with the boxing, and unable to recommend what they have done around it.
The partnership’s breakthrough was Run (2013), a four-part drama about interconnected lives in South London. Their early work drew on South London experiences and communities seldom seen on screen at the time. Writing episodes of New Blood (2016) and Lennie James’s missing-person drama Save Me (2018–2020) came next. With Fightland, Fajemisin-Duncan returned to creating a series, this time combining boxing with crime. Family and loyalty remain recurring concerns in his crime and thriller writing.
Smith is central to any assessment of this writing: the pair work out stories together before dividing and redrafting sections. They pay particular attention to Black British and London speech, an interest that fits their use of recognisable communities. Fightland also has co-creators and showrunners Damione Macedon and Raphael Jackson Jr., so its shortcomings cannot sensibly be attributed to one writer alone. The unclear motives are particularly damaging to a story that asks family and loyalty to make its criminal activity matter.
There is still a worthwhile premise here, and we would not dismiss the partnership on the evidence of one disappointing series. But the fights themselves are perfunctory, leaving too little to enjoy when the criminal intrigue falters. The next step need not be a bigger story. We would sooner see Fajemisin-Duncan and Smith write a boxing drama in which the sport gets its due.
Biography
Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan is a British screenwriter and television creator. He grew up in South London and frequently works in partnership with Marlon Smith.
Their credits include creating and writing the Channel 4 series Run (2013), writing episodes of New Blood (2016) and Save Me (2018–2020), and creating the boxing crime drama Fightland (2026) for Starz and Sky Atlantic, executive produced by 50 Cent. He has also worked as a story editor on Hangar 10 (2014).
Fajemisin-Duncan and Smith have received awards including the BAFTA Television Craft Award for Breakthrough Talent and RTS awards for drama writing.
