DING DING! ROUND ONE! In the red corner, we have heavyweight TV impresario Steven Knight – responsible for Peaky Blinders and SAS Rogue Heroes. In the blue corner, the remarkable true story of Jamaican Hezekiah Moscow, who travels to London with starry-eyed dreams of becoming a lion-tamer and becomes embroiled in the unforgiving bare-knuckle boxing underworld of the 1880s East End. Yes, it stars another overlooked gang of outlaws but Knight’s latest pugilistic drama is so much more than Peaky Blinders Goes Boxing.
Much of A Thousand Blows’ pre-bout publicity has centred upon the six-month transformation of Peaky Blinders alumnus Stephen Graham as Henry ‘Sugar’ Goodson, owner and fading kingpin of the last remaining bare-knuckle boxing pub in Wapping. Like the main attraction of any prize fight, he doesn’t appear until the end of the first episode and cuts a suitably imposing gladiatorial figure, before marauding sinisterly around like his spirit animal is a coked-up XL Bully.
At its core though, A Thousand Blows is a rollicking collision of two historical stories that existed within Victorian London around the same time. Moscow (Small Axe: Mangrove’s Malachi Kirby) stumbles upon The Forty Elephants, a fearsome all-female gang who rampage around performing flick-knife assisted smash-and-grabs on establishments such as Harrods. When we first meet its wily leader Mary Carr (The Crown’s Erin Doherty), she’s pretending to go into labour on the street while her underlings pick the pockets of distracted onlookers. With a Gallagher swagger, Doherty makes for a captivating anti-hero, effortlessly stealing scenes as a woman who refuses to adhere to society’s Marquis Of Queensberry rules. As Moscow becomes the final chess piece in her audacious heist plan, A Thousand Blows becomes a mesmeric mash-up of Raging Bull, Peaky Blinders and a Victorian Ocean’s Eleven.
We’ve seen enough Rocky films to know that it’s not just a rival our fighters are battling when they step into the ring, it’s their own demons. But in A Thousand Blows, they’re also squaring off against the quicksand of squalor and prejudice.
“You will learn to fight or this world will swallow you fucking whole,” remarks Sugar at one point of the remorseless capital. As such, Knight uses a mosaic of needling details to illuminate the racism Moscow faces (as well as providing an ever-timely story about the harsh realities immigrants encounter) and the role of class. As he dons gloves and moves into the West End “gentleman’s sport” variant of boxing, he’s confronted by onlookers wearing top hats ‘n’ tails, patrons including the Earl Of Lonsdale (Adam Nagaitis) and opponents so posh, you half-expect them to tie the ropes of the boxing ring into a double-Windsor.
With a Disney+ budget at its disposal, the production is lavish. Trapeze artists fly overhead at society parties and the boxing scenes are viscerally choreographed. Peppered with intriguing characters who you’ll want to Wikipedia to discover who’s inspired by real life counterparts, the six addictive episodes barrel their way to an ending that sets itself up perfectly for the (already filmed) second season. DING DING! Roll on round two.
‘A Thousand Blows’ streams on Disney + from February 21