Why everyone is loving Peacock’s Fight Night, which had the biggest debut ever for the streamer

As a native Memphian, I can’t help but want to celebrate the success of Peacock’s Fight Night , given that there’s some great Memphis talent that worked on the streamer’s new true-crime series (like director Craig Brewer and composer Scott Bomar). There’s also long been a shared cultural and historical kinship between Memphis and Atlanta, the setting for Peacock’s story of a heist that’s almost too wild to be believed — and which features a star-studded cast that includes the likes of Kevin Hart, Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, Taraji P. Henson, and Terrence Howard.

What’s more, the series debut was the most-watched in Peacock history. A fitting distinction, I suppose, given the epic nature of the heist at the center of Fight Night and of how Muhammad Ali’s historic, sold-out 1970 comeback fight at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium that same night marked the transformation of the city into a kind of Black Mecca of the US. Brewer, meanwhile, directed the first two and final two episodes of the eight-episode series, in addition to collaborating on writing the whole thing, while Bomar’s soul-, funk-, and R&B-infused score was recorded here in Memphis.

Streamers like Peacock, as most of us know by now, love to rave about their biggest titles being “the most-watched this” or an episode being “the most-streamed that” without releasing any details, as was done here with Fight Night . I bring that up, because I’m aware of some Peacock users whose app started autoplaying the series after having watched the NFL game on Friday — which is to say that (once again) it would be great if a streamer would provide some actually meaningful numbers in order to truly assess a series’ performance.

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Haiti Estelhomme, Yomally Brady, Terrence Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, and Michael James Shaw in “Fight Night.” Image source: Parrish Lewis/Peacock

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Dexter Darden as Muhammad Ali in “Fight Night.” Image source: Fernando Decillis/Peacock

That said, and at the risk of stating the obvious: Fight Night is a great drama, the kind of show you watch and immediately ask yourself why more people aren’t talking about it. Run through that cast list above one more time; this is a TV show with five honest-to-God movie stars in it, for crying out loud.

Based on journalist Jeff Keating’s iHeart podcast of the same name, released in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, the TV series offers viewers a composite of comedy, drama, true-crime, and a bit of social commentary thrown in for good measure. Hart plays a hustler known as the Chicken Man, who hosts a fight night afterparty. It featured a guest list of some of the wealthiest people in the country, but “the night ends with the most brazen criminal underworld heist in Atlanta’s history,” Peacock explains.

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“Suspected of masterminding the crime, Chicken Man is hellbent on clearing his name but must convince his old adversary, J.D. Hudson (Don Cheadle), one of the first Black detectives in the city’s desegregated police force, who is tasked with bringing those responsible to justice.”

Do yourself a favor and ignore the fact that it’s got Kevin Hart in it (sorry folks, his schtick is that annoying, so much so that his mere presence is an automatic turnoff for a not-insignificant number of viewers). If you can do that, what you’ll find is that Fight Night is a well-executed, well-written series — and one more title that makes a Peacock subscription worthwhile. “I love the vibes, the actors, and the story is compelling,” one Rotten Tomatoes viewer opines. “Music gives you nostalgia and upbeat from the (suspense). Keeps you flowing through the story.”

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• For more about the show’s incredible backstory, check out this Time magazine article : “The Wild True Story Behind Peacock’s Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist .”

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