Have you ever wondered why there’s never been a scripted series about boxing? After all, the tried and true scenario about the broken-down, 40-year-old boxer who makes a thrilling comeback has been mined for gold in the movies more often than the Sierra Nevadas.
Tonight, FX, a cable channel that never backs down from a fight, breaks yet another barrier with “Lights Out,” a scripted drama about a has-been champ and his family.
Of course, there’s the white, ex-champ, Patrick “Lights” Leary (Holt McCallany), who had the belt stolen in a championship fight the ended with a controversial decision. There’s his dad (Stacy Keach), who owns the gym where Lights trained to become a contendah more than 10 years earlier. There’s the champ’s sleaze-bag brother/manager Johnny (Pablo Schreiber), who dad likes best even though he’s always been up to no good. There’s the champ’s loyal wife, who is, of course, named Theresa (Catherine McCormack), and the cringe-inducing local TV commercials that the ex-champ is now forced to make for money.
Then, there’s the reigning African-American champ (Billy Brown), the guy who’d won that contested championship fight and is now dangling a rematch despite the million-to-one odds.
Seen it all before, sure. But now, for something almost different.
See, despite the fact that “Lights Out” has every one of these boxing cliches in spades, it also has that thing that makes all great boxing flicks memorable: great acting and characters you pull for despite the fact that you know you’re being manipulated.
A good part of the magic here lays at the feet of the show’s stars. McCallany, seemingly out of nowhere (via the Sorbonne and Oxford), steals the show as the former boxer and good father. He is way over his head, living in a mansion in New Jersey with three gorgeous daughters, and his beautiful wife, who’s just finished her residency and is on her way to a fabulous career as a doctor.
Somehow, however, the doctor wife is totally blind to the fact that they are broke, that he’s developing boxer’s dementia (maybe that medical career isn’t going to be so fabulous, after all) and that her husband must consider the rematch for them to survive. She also believes his cover-ups about their repossessed cars, his busted-up hand (implausibly, he enters a dentist’s home and beats him up in front of guests to get money owed a mobster) and even the reason he’s arrested.
However, the acting is so superb, it’s almost beside the point.
Question: Is it legal to bet on a staged boxing match? If so, I’m taking the odds on “Lights Out.”