Television series
Kingdom
Other titles called Kingdom: the 2012 series (NHK), the 2019 series (Netflix), the 2020 series (Mnet).
Kingdom is a bruising family drama set inside an MMA gym in Venice Beach, where a charismatic but damaged father runs his fighters' lives as ruthlessly as he dominates their sport. It's intimate and violent by turns, unapologetically messy about addiction, loyalty, and the men who break themselves for their families. For anyone who loved The Sopranos' moral fog or Eastbound & Down's unflinching self-destruction.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like family dramas where loyalty, money and blood ties grind against each other, and you don't mind a rough, cagey world of cage fighting as the backdrop for the family fights.
Skip it if you want MMA to be the point, since the bouts are a means to the family story and the gym's shady dealings can feel slow between them.
What it asks of you: Three seasons of hour-long episodes that stay patient and heavy, with sustained tension rather than quick payoffs, so it wants you to settle in and keep track of who owes what to whom.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Bloodline2015
A family bound by secrets in a claustrophobic setting, where love and violence are indistinguishable. Gorgeous and relentless, with the same sense that no character is safe from their own worst impulses.
But It's unrelenting darkness without many moments of levity. The third season stumbles badly, so some viewers felt gutted by how it ended.
The Sopranos1999
The blueprint for morally compromised antiheroes and family dysfunction as the real drama. Like Kingdom, it finds tragedy in the gap between who men want to be and who they are.
But Six seasons is a serious time commitment, and the pacing is deliberately slow. Some modern viewers find the early episodes dated.
Eastbound & Down2009
Danny McBride as a fallen athlete trying to rebuild his life and relationships. Same DNA as Kingdom: male shame, self-sabotage, and the people who love them anyway. Nastier and funnier, but the emotional core is identical.
But It's crude and abrasive. If you need your protagonists likable, this will exhaust you.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Kingdom
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Moonlight2016
Both examine how men are made and unmade by their families and environments. Kingdom is visceral and immediate; Moonlight is lyrical and reflective. They're asking the same question from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.
Three snapshots of a man's life across decades, each exploring identity, masculinity, and the people who shaped him. Like Kingdom, it refuses easy answers about who we become and why, but in a completely different register.
But It's quiet, poetic, and deeply internal. No plot in the conventional sense—if you need external action, it will feel slow.
More like this (8)
Ozark2017
Another show about a man's choices poisoning everyone around him, with a wife who sees through his lies and two kids caught in the fallout. The family drama is as tense as the crime plot.
But It runs four seasons and becomes more convoluted as it goes. The final season loses some of the emotional specificity that made it great.
Banshee2013
Raw, violent, and deeply human. A con man in a small town creates chaos for everyone he touches. Has Kingdom's willingness to let characters suffer real consequences without much redemption.
But It's very gory and the plotting becomes increasingly baroque. Some subplots feel indulgent rather than earned.
Lights Out2010
A boxer's documentary about his father, who was also a fighter. The most direct thematic mirror to Kingdom's exploration of fathers and sons in the ring and the wreckage that follows.
But It's a documentary, so no narrative arc in the traditional sense. The emotional payoff depends on your investment in the real people involved.
The Leftovers2014
Family and faith tested by forces beyond control. Like Kingdom, it's unflinching about grief and uses a contained setting to explore how people break and sometimes heal.
But It's deliberately abstract and metaphorical. If you need concrete explanations, it will frustrate you.
Westworld2016
Another premium drama about systems of control and the people trapped inside them. Frank Grillo's world of power and manipulation extends into this, though in a very different context.
But The plotting becomes overly complicated and the philosophical tangents can overwhelm character. Later seasons lose focus.
Rectify2013
A man reintegrating into a family after trauma, exploring identity and belonging with rare emotional intelligence. Slower and more meditative than Kingdom, but with similar depths of family pain.
But It's extremely slow and somber. Takes patience, and not everyone connects with its restrained style.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco2019
Both are about place as a character—Venice Beach for Kingdom, San Francisco for this film. Both explore what happens when the ground shifts beneath men trying to stay rooted.
A gorgeously shot meditation on belonging and displacement in a changing city. Two men trying to hold onto something that's slipping away, with Kingdom's sense of loss and loyalty but rendered as poetry rather than violence.
But It moves at its own pace and is more interested in feeling than narrative momentum. Some find it frustratingly elliptical.
Undisputed2002
Both are interested in fighters as men, not celebrities. Both understand the gym as a sanctuary and a prison. Undisputed is the distilled essence of what Kingdom explores at length.
A boxer's rise and fall, directed by Walter Hill with bruising authenticity and minimal sentimentality. Like Kingdom, it treats fighting as a language of male identity, but compressed into a lean 110 minutes of pure craft.
But It's from 1994 and looks it. The dialogue is spare to the point of starkness; if you need a lot of words, it won't give them to you.
People
Cast
Writing
- Byron BalascoCreator
Production
- Lynn StevensonAssociate Producer
- Vanessa HayesCo-Producer
- Byron BalascoExecutive Producer
- Tim IacofanoExecutive Producer
- Julie HerrinProducer