Prime Video's The Greatest is a sturdy, respectful retelling of Ali's life, but viewers who know the story won't find much they haven't already seen.
Muhammad Ali belongs to Africa and the diaspora as much as to America. The champion who lit up Black pride worldwide, and who fought the Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, is back on screen in The Greatest, a new limited series on Prime Video.
The show bills itself as the first authorized scripted series about Ali's life, and it has family backing. His widow, Lonnie Ali, is an executive producer. The storytelling leans on the book by his younger brother, Rahaman Ali, who shared a room with him as a boy in Kentucky, sparred with him for life and stayed in his entourage until Ali died in 2016 at 74.
The story is a familiar one: the rise through boxing, the years of exile for refusing the draft, the unlikely late-career comeback and the resilience he showed after his Parkinson's diagnosis. The series covers all of it in a straightforward, respectful way, and there are small pleasures along the way.
The catch is that it adds little to what Ali fans already know. Anyone who has read the books or seen the documentaries will be on well-trodden ground. For younger viewers who never saw the man at his peak, though, The Greatest is a solid, accessible introduction to why Ali still towers over sport.
