Meet the Owens; Fightland

“Who on earth is this show for? Michael Owen is most famous as a footballer, yet the show is very light on reflections on his playing days or involvement in the modern game. Cameos from the likes of Rooney and Jamie Carragher feel like non-sequiturs. He confesses that his career as a matchday co-commentator was scuppered by his inability to pretend to care about matches like West Ham v Burnley, yet his enthusiasm for horseracing shines through. There is a world, then, where Meet the Owens deploys the Clarkson’s Farm template for equestrianism, yet the access behind the scenes at the stables is limited. We see Michael drop a quarter of a million pounds on new horses at an auction. “Let’s just hang off on that new kitchen you wanted,” he tells his wife. This is the sort of confusing conflation of personal and business expenses that Clarkson’s Farm skilfully navigated.”
Nick Hilton, Independent

“This type of behind-the-curtain documentary, where you swiftly realise you’re not behind the curtain so much as staring at a very plush curtain, is becoming quite familiar. But having watched Beckham, Rooney, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Sergio Ramos and most recently Mourinho “tell all” while not really telling anything, a peculiar grammar has emerged. That’s why I found Meet the Owens rather enjoyable. Look at it as a cypher, one that requires reading between the lines, and it becomes as juicy as prime Le Carré. There’s a constant power play going on, one in which Owen and his family endeavour to give nothing away while the filmmakers slip things through like a no-look pass.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“In movies the boxing ring belongs to the underdog. It’s a place where redemption is served with a triumphant right hook. In TV it’s different, mainly because there aren’t any boxing dramas (unless, that is, you count A Thousand Blows’ bare-knuckle Victorians). Until now, except Fightland (Sky/Now) isn’t about a contender getting a shot at glory; instead the ring is a glamorous fig leaf for a world of gangsters, guns, shipments of class A white powders and a whole heap of murdered henchmen.”
James Jackson, The Times

“Fightland wants its violence, sex, bling, betrayals and bricks of illegal powder, and isn’t too fussed how it gets there. Except, it’s not interested enough in any of those things. If we’re going to do a sex-and-violence crime caper, let’s get properly naughty with it. But Fightland has almost no bedroom mojo and the fight scenes are perfunctory and weirdly short. They often offer tantalising premises – a duel to the death with a coked-up, machete-wielding strip club owner, for example, whose blade keeps clanging against the stage’s chrome pole – before petering out. If you can’t be excellent, at least be excessive; Fightland constantly holds back. Even boxing, which offers all kinds of ready-made metaphors for the power games played by businesspeople and criminal kingpins, is relegated to the background. The scenes in boxing gyms could be taking place anywhere.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian