Marlon Smith’s crime dramas put family and loyalty under pressure. We see promise in his choice of settings, but Fightland exposes a weakness: an appealing premise and good actors cannot compensate for characters whose motives remain unclear.
Fi1m perspective
In Fightland (2026), the boxing keeps giving way to gangsters who are not interesting enough to warrant the interruption. Smith and Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan combine the sport with crime and soap-opera complications, giving their series several ways to keep us occupied. Too little attention goes towards making the fights matter. We were frustrated by how perfunctory they felt. It is a promising setting for a drama, but we cannot recommend the eight-episode commitment.
Smith’s writing partnership with Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan is the useful way into his work. They co-created and wrote Run (2013), before contributing episodes to New Blood (2016) and Save Me (2018), the latter created by Lennie James. South London communities recur in their dramas, along with family ties and divided loyalties. Their method involves plotting together, writing sections separately and then rewriting one another’s work until both are satisfied. That gives each writer a chance to ask whether the other has made a character’s behaviour clear enough.
Fightland also has Damione Macedon and Raphael Jackson Jr. as co-creators and showrunners. An assessment of Smith should allow for that shared authorship, rather than hold him responsible for every choice. The writing nevertheless needs to decide what deserves our attention, even when several kinds of drama are available. Boxing, crime and soap offer plenty of scope for pressure both inside and outside the ring. But once the sporting story is pushed aside, the criminals need to repay the time spent with them, and here they do not.
Howard Charles and Anita-Joy Uwajeh give worthwhile performances, so there is something to watch even when the plotting fails them. Smith’s interest in family and loyalty is a sound starting point for drama; people can want incompatible things without becoming impossible to understand. We need enough clarity to feel the cost of a decision, and Fightland too often leaves the reasons for one obscure. We would welcome more attention to that before another complication is added. Anyone coming principally for the boxing should look elsewhere.
Biography
Marlon Smith is a British screenwriter and television creator. He works in partnership with Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan, with whom he grew up in South London.
The duo created and co-wrote the Channel 4 series Run (2013). Smith wrote episodes of the Sky Atlantic drama Save Me (2018–2020), created by Lennie James. He is co-creator of the Starz and Sky Atlantic boxing crime drama Fightland (2026), on which he also serves as writer and executive producer.
Smith and Fajemisin-Duncan received the RTS Award for Best Drama Writer for Run and the BAFTA Television Craft Award for Breakthrough Talent.
