Can The Greatest Escape Ali’s Legend?
A champion can win every scene and still make a dull television character. That is the problem facing The Greatest, Prime Video’s new drama about Muhammad Ali. A name this familiar sells a premiere. Keeping us for eight episodes takes something more.
All eight arrive on November 4. Jaalen Best plays the young boxer, with the first season running from his 1960 Olympic victory to the 1964 heavyweight title fight and name change. That is a useful boundary. Four years leaves room for a young man to make mistakes without hustling him toward the next famous photograph.
Creator Ben Watkins put the ambition plainly in his Teen Vogue interview. He wanted viewers to loosen their grip on the finished icon before watching the young man become him.
This is the first authorized scripted series about Ali. The estate’s approval is an obvious selling point, but it cannot settle the question that matters on the sofa: will this Ali ever surprise us? A drama can get the public milestones right and still make its subject feel embalmed.
Watkins’s ambition is the more persuasive reason to watch. Hero worship makes ordinary behaviour awkward. Someone we admire might be petty in an argument, misread a friend or simply be tiresome company. A drama that allows those possibilities has a chance of making the achievements feel earned. Turning every private failing into a scandal would be just as dull as leaving them all out.
My vote is for the version that lets Best be young. There is something worth seeing in a person who has not yet learned how to carry the name everyone else already knows. That gives this series a reason to exist beyond recreating familiar victories.
Start The Greatest on November 4 with the premiere, even though the whole run is available. The invitation is to meet its Ali before signing up for eight hours with him.
