“A Thousand Blows,” on Hulu, is a grimy historical drama, an evocative boxing drama and a festive crime drama. Its biggest draw, though, is that its creator is Steven Knight, who also created “Peaky Blinders,” and the shows resemble each other quite a bit in their muddy brutality. “Blows” is less brooding, though.
The show, based on a true story, follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his best friend, Alec (Francis Lovehall), who emigrate from Jamaica to London in the 1880s. Hezekiah is there to be a lion tamer at the zoo. But when faced with a slew of demeaning setbacks, he winds up in the boxing ring instead, where he becomes something of a star. He catches the eye of Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), the leader of an all-female crime ring, who sees him as “the last chess piece” in her plan.
“And I am a pawn?” he asks.
“More like a knight in battered armor,” she says.
Not everyone likes Hezekiah’s shine, though, especially Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), a bare-knuckle boxer and generally volatile dude who has known Mary since she was a kid. They share a destitute, Dickensian background. Most of the characters here are fueled by a lust for vengeance against villains from their past, and they also suffer from shabby treatment in the present because of their race, class, gender or ethnicity. Sometimes they cope with this by forming exciting criminal and romantic allegiances, and sometimes they save their feelings for the boxing ring.
Characters in “Blows” punch and get punched a lot, and viewers might feel that they too are on the receiving end of an absolute dagwood of a knuckle sandwich. Some of this thick bleakness is cut with fun sequences of Mary and her crew’s high-end robberies. Glamorous parties — some of which are also part of Mary’s high-end robberies — add trapeze work and candelabras to the show’s mix; one cannot live on bloodied visages and sooty urchins alone.
Although much of the show feels predictable, radiant performances — especially from Kirby, Graham and Doherty — lend it a sense of freshness and verve. There’s a fieriness to everything, and at just six episodes, also a breathlessness. That sense of forward momentum carries through the finale, which ends with coming attractions for more episodes.
SIDE QUESTS
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“Peaky Blinders” is on Netflix.
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If you want a different, slower British period drama starring Tom Hardy and created by Knight (alongside Hardy and Hardy’s father, Chips), “Taboo” is on Peacock.
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Kirby and Graham are both in the tense restaurant movie “Boiling Point,” and Graham returns for its terrific and different TV sequel, also called “Boiling Point.” (You don’t have to watch one to watch the other.) The movie is on Peacock, and the show is on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and the Roku Channel.
