It takes a while to realize that the hero of Peacock’s new crime dramedy Fight Night: The Million Dollar Robbery is not in reality the convoy of extravagant gangsters, crooks and petty criminals of the series, but rather the city of Atlanta. And that the eponymous robbery, despite the stated financial value, is in reality a robbery for prestige and worldwide recognition

Or maybe the hero of Fight Night is Kevin Hart’s Chicken Man, not because he is a virtuous or resourceful figure, but because Chicken Man represents Atlanta – a fighter with big dreams who learns to overcome his infamous past by thinking of the wider world outside himself.

All credit goes to Shaye Ogbonna, who adapted the podcast of the same name, for creating a comic thriller that has an American Studies thesis at its core. That’s not sarcasm! Fight Night has some real things on its mind and features an incredibly deep and overall well-used ensemble cast. These elements generally make up for the myriad structural and tonal issues in an eight-hour runtime that bloats by at least two hours and struggles to maintain any momentum.

The year is 1970, and Atlanta is a small town still struggling to emerge from the shame of its Dixie roots. Chicken Man is an ex-con who runs the numbers game with the help of his lover and friend Vivian (Taraji P. Henson), well aware that his business will soon be usurped by a nationwide lottery. (Oddly enough, the same subplot plays out in Apple TV+’s Baltimore-set series.) Lady in the Lake.)

Chicken Man and his hometown get a chance to celebrate at the same time in a show that is, to quote him, “based on some things that really happened.”

Muhammad Ali (Dexter Darden, who captures the champion’s cadence but not his physicality) is still a polarizing figure because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. He has scheduled his first fight in three years in Atlanta, much to the chagrin of Georgia’s segregationist governor and the local police. The event stirs controversy in the area and brings together a host of African-American celebrities who join Chicken Man’s dream of turning the city into a black Las Vegas (initially mostly for his own benefit). When he hears that the country’s leading black criminals will be in town, he offers to throw a party in honor of Samuel L. Jackson’s infamous Frank Moten. What Chicken Man doesn’t know is that there was already a planned party and plans to rob that party, and he thus becomes the scapegoat.

The robbery and the rising death toll make life difficult for Detective JD Hudson (Don Cheadle). He was one of the city’s first black police officers recruited to protect Ali, although he himself has mixed feelings about the boxer.

Soon, Chicken Man is on the front page of local newspapers as the mastermind of a crime he didn’t orchestrate, and godfathers from across the country – including Terrence Howard’s Cadillac from Jersey – are trying to kill him. The real robbers realize that the seemingly harmless burglary also has a bounty on its head. Who will be alive when the dust settles, and who will win the battle for Atlanta’s future?

One of the keys to a good robbery and a good robbery story is precision, and Fight Night is a decidedly ponderous thing. It only has enough story for a two-hour movie, but enough characters for a five-season cable drama, and the attempt to bridge that gap never flows. In addition to the genre-standard and repetitive structural adjustments – starting with a pointless in medias res The series begins with numerous “It was a plan from the start!” flashbacks, revealing that this is a show that constantly introduces new characters and then often needs to be re-introduced.

When you have Jackson, Howard, Hart, Henson and Cheadle, the all-star cast alone gives you extra time to finally give the characters backstories. The A-listers all get enough material to deliver either completely successful or at least incredibly entertaining performances.

This is probably Hart’s best semi-dramatic work to date, a mix of quick-fire humor and increasingly serious reflection wrapped up in wide-collar suits and an always impeccable afro. Though there are moments when Jackson feels like he’s leaning heavily on his old Tarantino script, only with far less flowery dialogue, he pulls off his fast-talking tough-guy demeanor with menacing ease. When it’s time for Jackson and Cheadle, surely the story’s most complex character, to share the screen, it’s a total if too-infrequent delight. Henson maintains Vivian’s dignity even when the scripts resort to hackneyed threats of sexual violence, and she finds a sass that’s more fragile and less overtly comic than in her Emmy-nominated Rich turn.

But the participants in the actual assignment are mostly played by relative unknowns, so the show tells us who they all are. Then there’s the heist, where the characters all wear masks, making it impossible to know which people we only glimpsed in the previous episode. Then we’re told who they are again in the next episode, and then they all spend time in an abandoned nightclub and are reintroduced in a later episode. While I gradually recognize them and become interested in one or two of their fates—there are seven or eight robbers before bad things happen—until the finale, each wave of new explanation resets the accumulated tension and emotional involvement back to zero.

I understand why Ogbonna and company wanted to make sure these roles weren’t marginal. They’re the systematically oppressed pawn victims, whether they’re tools of the military-industrial complex overseas or the mysterious power brokers who commissioned the plot. It’s interesting to watch the writers try to decide whether they deserve special sympathy – some of them are pretty bad guys – or just general human empathy. Plus, they’re all very well acted, and there are standout moments for Melvin Gregg, Myles Bullock, Sam Adegoke, and others.

But just as you sense that the writers want to flesh out characters who would otherwise be supporting roles (see also Artrece Johnson, excellent as Chicken Man’s wife Faye, and Teresa Celeste, spirited as the generally undefined Maxine), you can also imagine that editors and audiences can’t wait to see Samuel L. Jackson waving his gun and cursing again, or Don Cheadle hanging out with Muhammad Ali.

Stars: They are both a blessing and a curse.

It is a lack of focus that also causes the tone to fluctuate. Allowing violence to fluctuate between frivolous and meaningful requires a sensitivity that Fight Night rarely has. A performer like Jackson can still deliver hollow curse words, but empty violence and cheap suspense built around the possibility of rape are exploitative in a story that can’t decide whether it wants to go in that direction.

Craig Brewer, who directed the first two and final two chapters, knows how to capture a grindhouse aesthetic. The opening credits are a true B-movie, complete with weathered film stock and the old NBC peacock logo. Brewer’s early episodes use split screens and zooms to capture the feel of the late ’60s and early ’70s, but much of the middle of the season is more visually understated. It’s a reminder of how much easier it was for Fight Night to maintain some level of consistency as a feature film or perhaps a six-part series. There were several points in the middle of the season where my attention waned.

These were the actors that kept me watching. The show isn’t consistent, but the world the writers create gives stars, newcomers, and veteran characters — I wouldn’t leave out the vibrant work of people like Rockmond Dunbar, RonReaco Lee, and Michael James Shaw — opportunities to shine.