We are not big fans of period dramas that take place in Victorian-era London, because most of the time they are overly involved with society people who’s most intense activity is going to dances in order to meet future spouses. But of course, there is another side of London during that time period, and a new Hulu series examines a group of people who had their own ways of surviving in the hardscrabble environment in East London.
Opening Shot: A closeup of a woman breathing as if she’s in labor. We see her water break.
The Gist: Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall) are literally just off the boat from Jamaica as they watch what looks like a woman giving birth in the street. But as the two of them look on, other women are going through the crowd picking pockets. When someone mentions the police, everyone runs, and the “pregnant” woman sheds her fake belly and water pouch.
Hezekiah has come to London to work for the Zoological Society as a lion tamer, and has brought Alec with him, mainly because conditions in Jamaica have gotten intolerable. They’re told by a constable that they’ll have better luck finding lodging in East London, which is the poorest, roughest part of the city.
In the meantime, the woman who pretended to be pregnant, Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), plans the next heist with her all-female street gang, known as the Forty Elephants. Mary’s goal is to aim a lot higher and get a bigger score than the small-time stuff they’ve been doing to that point. She suspects that Mr. Lao (Jason Tobin), a Chinese immigrant who owns the boarding house where she and her gang stay, might want into their scheme.
Hezekiah and Alec have a hard time finding lodging, even in East London. As it is, they don’t have a lot of money. But Hezekiah finds a notice that the Blue Coat Boy tavern invites all comers to challenge either Henry “Sugar” Goodson (Stephen Graham) or his younger brother, Edward “Treacle” Goodson (James Nelson-Joyce) to a bare-knuckle boxing match. Both Hezekiah and Alec boxed in Jamaica, so Hezekiah thinks that they can earn some money. Alec gets in the ring with Treacle, and is able to go longer with him than the other challengers, but is ultimately knocked out.
The friends impress Mary, who knows the Goodsons and is a regular at the tavern. Also, Hezekiah calls her out on their pregnancy scheme from earlier in the day.
When Hezekiah finally goes to the Zoological Society for the lion tamer job, he is disappointed with the job the owner wants him to do while the lions are in transit. So he decides to get in the ring himself, against the much larger and nastier Sugar.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A Thousand Blows was created by Steven Knight, and it has a similar feel to Knight’s best-known series, Peaky Blinders.
Our Take: While based on real people that “lived and fought together in London’s East End,” A Thousand Blows is a fictional story, and Knight is able to use that to launch a three-sided story where the stories dovetail together nicely. We’re not jerked around from story to story in the first episode, because everything comes together quickly, and shows the symbiotic relationship folks like Mary Carr, Sugar Goodson and Hezekiah Moscow had in East London during the Victorian era.
The look of the series does a good job of showing the relative grunginess and lawlessness of East London. Even there, there is a strata of class and race that plays a part in how Hezekiah and Alec are treated. But there’s still opportunity there, even if the opportunity isn’t exactly legal.
The highlight of the series so far is Erin Doherty as Mary Carr. Doherty’s ability to show Mary’s ruthlessness, the “black heart” a dishonest suitor of hers says she has, makes Mary compelling. Her relationships are highly transactional, but when she notices how well Alec handled himself in the ring with Treacle, you see a spark of how she treats people whom she thinks might be able to help her and her crew out. As we hear about late in the episode, she has huge plans for the Forty Elephants’ big score, and the wheels are turning as to what role the new Jamaican immigrants she just met can play there.
The one character we don’t know a ton about yet is Sugar. Graham, who is also an executive producer of the series, plays Sugar with his usual menacing intensity. There might be more to him than just being a larger-than-life figure, but the first episode is content with building him up before showing him doing anything.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Hezekiah is seen in the opposite corner than Sugar, about to take on the legendary brawler.
Sleeper Star: Morgan Hilaire does a lot with a little as Esme Long, who is Mary’s right-hand woman in the gang.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not big on turning on subtitles for shows where everyone speaks English, but the cornucopia of thick accents in this show made us flip the subtitles on pretty quickly.
Our Call: STREAM IT. A Thousand Blows does a good job of tying its stories together well, and tries to keep the action going in the process.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.