The gritty and glitzy sides of London boxing and the crime world collide in Fightland, an action-heavy drama about Duke Kilroy (Howard Charles), a onetime heavyweight champion obsessed with getting revenge on the man who took everything from him.
Igniting the eight-episode season is a brief but spectacular stop in Las Vegas, where Duke wins the belt, gets the girl (their hotel room tryst reveals just how chiseled Charles got for playing this role), and then sees his younger brother killed in a vicious assault. In anguish, Duke snaps, hunts down the killer, and beats him to death…which lands Duke in a U.S. prison for eight years.
Things really get going when the released ex-champ comes back to London to destroy the powerful man he thinks set him up — his onetime mentor, crime boss and promoter Kingsley Marshall (Nicholas Pinnock), who has mysteriously disappeared.
“Duke returns home as though a stranger, hell-bent on annihilating Kingsley. He holds him responsible for the destruction of his whole life — his family, his future, his freedom,” Charles tells TV Guide Magazine on a break on the London set. “He’s willing to do anything and everything to avenge the death of his brother.”
That’s not Duke’s only motivation, though. Adding to the complications, the girl he got in Vegas happens to be Kingsley’s wife, Joy (Deborah Ayorinde), who now has a young son. “He’s always drawn back to her. It’s like a moth to the light. Such is life, such is love,” Charles muses. Ayorinde says Duke’s return “turns her world upside down and causes her to find herself.”
Fightland season 1 Marketing Shoot December 5-6 2025
Starz
The sexy revenge saga is the work of executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, the rapper turned TV mogul who, with Courtney Kemp, created the Power universe, which consists of five (so far!) interconnected crime dramas with a devoted fan base.
“I like characters with layers,” says Jackson. “Nobody’s all good or all bad — they’re complicated, and they make choices that have real consequences.
“Fightland isn’t just about throwing punches. It’s about ambition, loyalty, betrayal, and what people are willing to risk to win. I’ve always been drawn to stories about survival. It doesn’t matter if it’s music, business, or boxing; people connect with watching someone fight their way through impossible situations.”
Some of the formidable forces looking to keep Duke on the ropes are Kingsley’s grown-up kids/Joy’s stepchildren — the icy, unbending Cece (Anita-Joy Uwajeh) and her savvy but more congenial brother, Zeek (Charles Babalola). They run the real money-making side of Marshall Promotions, a massive drug empire.
Duke isn’t sure if the Marshall children know why Kingsley is missing or where he is, but to force his nemesis into the open, the vengeful fighter hits him where it hurts. Duke allies with a cartel desperate to control London’s market and works to infiltrate the Marshall drug kingdom and destroy it from the inside. He gets help from his good-natured best mate and cut-man, Jay (Tyler Conti), and finds emotional support in ring girl and former boxer Kim (Tahirah Sharif), who makes no secret in the series of her attraction to the famous champ.
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Duke’s home base is his family’s gritty gym, Kilroy’s. The shooting location is East London’s real-life Peacock Gymnasium, notorious for producing great boxers and one of the authentic U.K. spots used by production. We visited and threw some punches with boxer Marcus Luther, who trained Charles and plays his opponent in the premiere’s title bout. It was a far lighter version of the two-week pre-shoot boxing and street-fighting boot camp, which, Luther says, “was brutal, but we had to make it authentic,” lauding Charles for being a quick study.
The gym is a world away from the sprawling, elegant country home outside of London that doubles as Marshall Mansion. There, impeccably dressed on a blue velvet sofa, Pinnock holds court.
“I’ve never played a character so ruthless,” says Pinnock, who recently starred in the ABC legal drama For Life. “If getting what he wants means sacrificing his own kin, Kingsley would do it. He manipulates everybody.” Pinnock also promises “a war” after Duke stirs things up. But deep down, it’s mighty complicated. “Duke is the son Kingsley wished he had. If things had gone better for Kingsley, Duke is who he would want to have been.”
That said, Kingsley’s heartlessness might just deliver him a KO against his more sensitive opponent. Charles confesses, “Duke’s not a monster. He’s wounded. He’s a man who has heart, a man capable of love. He isn’t willing to go as far as people that don’t have love in their heart. In a way, what he wants is peace.” Still, job one is to dethrone Kingsley. To do so, don’t expect Duke to pull any punches.
Fightland, Friday, July 31, 9/8c, Starz (new episodes stream weekly every Friday)
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