Recap of the First Episode of ‘A Thousand Blows’: Mother Knows Best

Mary Carr’s first action is deception. In front of two Jamaican immigrants, Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), who are new to London, she pretends to be a pregnant woman giving birth on the street. As a crowd gathers, her accomplices are pickpocketing the onlookers. Upon hearing that a police officer is approaching to help her, she promptly disappears, with her associates following suit. Mary’s elusiveness is likened to that of a street creature.

“A Thousand Blows,” the latest historical drama created by Steven Knight, the mastermind behind “Peaky Blinders,” features Erin Doherty as Mary, also known as the Queen of the Elephants. What makes Doherty a captivating choice is her distinct appearance. Unlike typical lead actors, Doherty possesses a unique, elongated facial structure reminiscent of a Modigliani painting. Her face transforms when Mary’s mood darkens, exuding an intimidating aura that makes it challenging to maintain eye contact. Conversely, her countenance becomes irresistible when she shows warmth, especially when dealing with money or men. Doherty’s compelling portrayal elevates “A Thousand Blows” instantly.

The narrative, centered around theft and bare-knuckle fighting in the gritty East End of 19th-century London, occasionally veers into familiar territory. It revolves around two determined, underprivileged young men striving to establish themselves in the bustling metropolis, a storyline as old as civilization itself.

But not when Mary Carr’s on screen. This is a woman whose steely command of the Forty Elephants, a very real gang of female thieves and burglars, makes her the equal of the toughest men in the toughest part of England’s biggest town. If she takes a shine to you, as she does to Hezekiah when they both find themselves in the audience of a boxing match, she’ll get right up close and flirt — and she may even return the money she lifted from your pocket in the process. But if she really takes a shine to you, as she does to her shiftless gambler fuckbuddy Sharkey (Elliot Warren), she’ll put a gun in your mouth and try to rape you, until she finds out you’re too limp-dicked off laughing gas to perform. I don’t particularly want to know what happens if she doesn’t like you at all.

The attempted rape scene is the episode’s standout moment, the thing A Thousand Blows shows you that you don’t see on television very often, if ever. It’s a fascinating scene, a trick that counts on the audience getting turned on by a woman demanding her lover fuck her right then and there, so that it can use this against us when it reveals that she’s committing a vicious crime. Again, most series simply do not have their female leads commit sexual assault within five or ten minutes of introducing them. (Helly R. would never.) 

When she’s not trying to violently coerce her male underlings into sex or flirting with random strangers whose handsomeness and poise she finds intriguing, Mary is planning what sounds like the heist of the century. A trade delegation from the Chinese emperor is on its way to London, and when they arrive Queen Victoria plans on showering them with gifts — gifts Queen Mary plans to steal, lock stock and barrel. 

To pull it off, she’ll need help from her Chinese landlord, Mr. Lao (Jason Tobin), an educated man whom Mary suspects is on the run. (Otherwise, why would a literate, fluently multilingual man wind up operating a fleabag hotel for crooks?) Lao, coincidentally, has also taken a shine to Hezekiah, whose proficiency with Lao’s language — he had a Chinese grandmother, since many Chinese immigrants came to Jamaica to work — wins him over. Even though his inn is completely booked solid, he allows Hezekiah to sleep in the cellar where the coal comes in. Hezekiah in turn sneaks Alec down there so they both have a place to stay, even if surreptitiously. 

Hezekiah and Alec have a major problem facing them even beyond the racism they encounter at seemingly every turn, even from Irish people who’ve felt the genocidal wrath of the Empire. They have almost no money, and are constantly getting shaken down for what little they have. Their first big idea is to have Alec enter a boxing competition, one of those old-school “if you can beat the champ, you win a cash prize” contests. (This is the kind of thing Spider-Man competed in just before allowing that burglar to escape and kill his Uncle Ben in some versions of his story.)

At that point, they face a different problem entirely: Edward “Treacle” Goodson (James Nelson-Joyce), a lean mean fighting machine who mops the floor with most of his opponents. Alec’s speed and reflexes get the better of Treacle for a while, until the Brit throws a few dirty strikes and wins the match as a result, leaving the Jamaicans with even less money than before.

It gets worse. Hezekiah brought Alec to London because of a job offer he’d received from a zoo, where he hopes to be trained as a lion tamer. But when he arrives at the facility — and is charged one of his two remaining shillings for admittance — he learns he’s been brought aboard not as a trainer, but as an exhibit. The owner expects him to put on an animal-skin garment, hold a machete, and pose for white customers as a “Wild Man of Africa,” like he’s nothing more than an ape. Hezekiah nearly kills the guy before settling for locking him into his own exhibit. “Cages are for animals,” he spits, a sentiment that could probably get you deported today if you said it to an ICE agent.

So Hezekiah apparently feels he has one option left: using his last shilling to enter the next night’s boxing contest. Only this time, he’s not facing Treacle Goodson — he’s facing his older brother, Sugar (Stephen Graham). Introduced as he strides around the ring in slow motion, Sugar is a man who looks like he was born when his mother was punched in the stomach, then took a few licks himself before beating the obstetrician’s ass with his umbilical cord still attached. Previously glimpsed only as a shadow behind the blinds of the boxing hall’s office, he appears to be both the brain and the brawns of this operation. So it’s with dawning horror that Mary realizes her pretty new pal Hezekiah is next on the chopping block…and that’s where the episode ends.

This, too, is a gutsy move. I’m happy to complain about series that punt their climactic moments into the following season due to whatever structural or budgetary obstacle got in their way. But a series premiere doing this? Saving the fight between Hezekiah and Sugar, the two men on all the posters, until the second episode? I don’t care if all the episodes are dropping at once and it ultimately doesn’t matter: That tiny bit of delayed gratification speaks well to the show’s willingness to zig where you’d expect it to zag. I’d have bet quite a few shillings this episode would end with Hezekiah standing triumphanty; instead it ends with him standing, period, and likely preparing to catch the beating of a lifetime, to Mary’s evident horror.

My biggest complaint about A Thousand Blows is that you don’t get to see too many of said blows land. Thanks to choppy editing and camera angles designed to conceal fake punches, the bareknuckle boxing isn’t nearly as visceral as I expected. Perhaps this will change now that Sugar and Hezekiah have entered the arena, but it’s frustrating in the moment. However, experiencing the emotional savagery of Mary’s assault on Sharkey or Hezekiah’s discovery of the true nature of his job feels a bit like getting battered around the ring in and of itself. I want emotional violence to go with my physical violence, and I want them both to land knockouts.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.