‘A Thousand Blows' is a vibrant, messy look at Victorian London
The propulsive six-episode series premiered at the BFI London Film Festival last October, and a second season has already been greenlit. The adventure begins with the entrance of friends Hezekiah (the magnetic Malachi Kirby) and Alec (Francis Lovehall), just off the ship from Jamaica. Hezekiah's eyes shine with the possibilities of future opportunity despite traumatic memories of his island life at the hands of brutal overseers.
Upon their arrival, the hungry, homeless duo marvels at the metropolis. They wander into a largely male crowd of spectators observing a young woman in labor on the side of a busy cobblestoned street. It doesn't take Hezekiah long, as he watches light-fingered females flit among the gawkers, picking pockets and fishing for pocket watches, to realize they've wandered into a scam in progress. When one of the gawkers calls for the police to aid the laboring woman, she rises and flees, shedding her strap-on baby bump along the way. Making a strong first impression, this is the audience's vivid introduction to Mary Carr (Erin Doherty, 'The Crown''s Princess Anne), and her thieving female gang, 'The Forty Elephants.'
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About the same time, the now downtrodden foreigners discover that being broke and finding housing while Black in the bustling city is nearly as daunting as sailing north from Jamaica. Fortuitously, out of the muck, Hezekiah plucks a flier seeking fighters who, for a prize, will challenge the local champions. That sends the Jamaicans toward the boxing ring that holds the plot's center. With Hezekiah believing he has a job offer as a lion tamer at a local zoological park (yet another scam), he initially puts Alec forth to face the brothers Goodson: Treacle (James Nelson-Joyce) and Sugar ('Boiling Point's' Stephen Graham).
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Graham, a mere 5-foot-5, has bulked up so that he's basically 5-foot square. Sugar, no sweetheart, is a man of appetites who has found his sport and breathes it through his pores. He's as dirty and unruly as the deadly game he plays. The journeyman British actor bites into the role, sometimes literally — Sugar occasionally chomps an opponent's nose or arm. He's a man in full, ferocious and unchained, which is both his power and Achilles' heel. Sugar has no off button, which makes him very dangerous.
When Hezekiah's job offer falls through, and Treacle beats Alec to a bloody pulp, he decides he must enter Sugar's ring himself in order to survive London. Meanwhile, as the two find their rhythm, the ambitious Carr plots to expand her reach by pulling off a big-time caper (stealing silver from Her Majesty the Queen) in order to leave behind small-time thievery for good. And there's a place in her plotting to employ Hezekiah as muscle.
Erin Doherty as Mary Carr in "A Thousand Blows."
Disney/Robert Viglasky/Disney
Doherty plays Carr with a pleasing balance of swagger and pragmatism. Her gang plotline, and the internal and external challenges to maintaining power on the streets, could yield its own series. Yet it becomes richer when interwoven with the Hezekiah and Alec's story, Sugar's bare-knuckled battles, and plotlines involving Carr's Asian landlord, Lao (Jason Tobin), an immigrant running from his own demons who gets entangled in his tenant's schemes.
As an independent woman who lacks social standing in a man's world, Carr has empathy for the newcomer as Hezekiah confronts discrimination. A bold self-made woman, she chooses her friends alongside her battles. It's Carr, disguised as a high society lady, who introduces Hezekiah to a new form of pugilism — one fought with boxing gloves in London's posh parlors.
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Whether enacted before an audience wearing tie and tails, or rabble in rags, the boxing sequences are vicious and visceral. The cinematography is fluid and ferocious. Each confrontation ups the stakes of the dramatic arc, while providing tense scenes of carnage, victory, and vanquishment. This is a society of clear winners and losers, and Carr, Hezekiah, and Sugar must brazen their way to the top or be broken and kicked to the gutter.
The costumes, production design, score, and tableau are equal to the razzle dazzle of 'Peaky Blinders.' While there isn't the galvanizing gangster family saga fueled by charismatic Cillian Murphy's kingpin Tommy Shelby that propelled Knight's series to top 100 status on the IMDB TV charts, 'A Thousand Blows' lands its punch, making for killer television.
A THOUSAND BLOWS
Starring: Malachi Kirby, Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty, Francis Lovehall, Jason Tobin. On Hulu
Thelma Adams is a cultural critic and the author of the bestselling historical novel, '
,' about Josephine Marcus, the Jewish wife of Wyatt Earp.
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