All my close friends know that I'm a huge fan of MMA. Even wrote a few posts about MMA on Steemit/Hive.
Fair to say that I've consumed my fair share of MMA related content outside of the actual sport itself.
I've watched Never Back Down, Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown, skimmed the hell out of "Fight Alley", and the best out of the whole lot, "Warrior".
Aside from "Warrior", the rest weren't very good.
And that's putting it lightly.
So when I heard about "Kingdom" on the Fighter and the Kid Podcast where they had Frank Grillo on as the episode's guest, I was very skeptical.
As much as I like Frank Grillo as an actor, Mr Grillo's job is to promote his latest project, whether it sucks or not, which at the time was the TV show, Kingdom.
And given the fact that "Warrior" was the only good one out of the bunch, I didn't even bother checking out the first episode and had more or less written it off as just another mediocre(at best) MMA based show.
I just didn't have the energy to commit to it.
And as you get older, you realize just how much your energy is a precious and finite resource.
Flash forward to 2020, I'm browsing the subreddit "NetflixBestOf" looking for recommendations and I see quite a few favourable comments on "Kingdom".
Particularly these two.
That's pretty high praise considering the initial impression I already had of the show.
Since random people online who I've never met are recommending a show, I felt it would be rude if I didn't at least watch the first episode.
Enter Kingdom
Once my wife and I got started with Kingdom it became apparent after the first 2 episodes that we were going to have to binge this.
I didn't keep track of the time we took to finish the show but I believe we got all 3 seasons done in around two weeks.
Without giving away too much about what Kingdom is about, because I don't necessarily think that that's where the show's strength lies, it revolves around the life of MMA gym owner/trainer and ex-fighter, Alvey Kulina, and the complicated relationship with his family.
Where the show truly shines is with it's realistic characters and the believably organic and dynamic relationship they have with each other.
The actors do a tremendous job of making you believe they're real people with real problems which is only enhanced by the show's amazingly written dialogue. Each interaction comes off as a genuine exchange and you don't get the sense that they're "acting" or "performing" but rather it feels like you're getting a peek into these people's lives.
This is especially true, in my opinion, when it comes to Jonathan Tucker and Frank Grillo who play as Jay and Alvey respectively.
Both of these gentlemen brought a lot of depth and range to their characters that sold me on the complexities of their personalities.
Although many of the scenes take place in the gym, the MMA aspect of the whole show takes a backseat to the drama. The fights are far and few in-between, something that I appreciate just because I'm way more interested in their character development than them as fighters.
Having said that, Kingdom knocks it out of the park when it comes to the portrayal of MMA.
Got to give credit to the showrunners for hiring long time MMA veteran, Joe "Daddy" Stevenson, to be advisor on everything MMA on the show.
The fight choreography is the most realistic I've ever seen in TV and/or Movies and it's used sparingly and strategically to enhance the character development and story progression. Even my wife, who just couldn't give a sh*t about actual fighting was on the edge of her seat with anxiety during the fight scenes just because she was so invested in the characters.
Sure, you still get that movie magic moment that you don't often see in a real fight but it's not such a stretch from reality that it ends up breaking the immersion. After all, MMA did give us THIS amazing movie moment😎
And if you're a long time fan of MMA, there's a little bit of fun to be had by spotting the familiar faces of real life fighters and referees on the show.
But for all the gritty realism that Kingdom is grounded on there is also a good amount of humour and levity that balances out the seriousness of it all.
In fact, one of my favourite scenes in the whole series is in an episode that revolves around certain fighters going through their weight cuts together and without getting too much into it it is simply hilarious and brilliant while maintaining its tone of realism.
My Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Kingdom is a criminally underrated and relatively unknown series that should be in the discussion of great TV series more often than not.
Whether you're a fan of the sport of MMA or not, the amazing performance of the cast, the well written gripping dialogue, and the direction of the show is enough to pull you into the world of Kingdom and to invest in its believably flawed characters.
Hopefully the shows gains more fans since it's been picked up by Netflix.