‘A Thousand Blows’: New Hulu Series Is Going to Be the New ‘Peaky Blinders’

Stephen Graham does scary intimidation like few others, and in A Thousand Blows, he’s a veritable battering ram of primal rage and jealousy. Playing a bare-knuckle boxer in London’s East End circa 1880, the Boardwalk Empire and The Irishman alum radiates a hard-headed menace and self-destructiveness that ignites these rough-and-tumble proceedings. A charismatic force of nature whose fury is almost elemental, he’s rarely been better, and he’s the best reason to tune in to Steven Knight’s latest underworld drama.

The only reason, in fact.

Returning to his Peaky Blinders stomping grounds, Knight sets his six-part import, premiering Feb. 21 on Hulu, in a metropolis of grime and ash, smoke and rain, filth and brutality. It’s a familiar locale that he knows well, albeit one that he employs for a decidedly hackneyed tale of criminal nefariousness, hot-blooded rivalries, and David-vs-Goliath conflicts.

No matter Graham’s seething performance, this rugged period piece doesn’t dance like a butterfly or sting like a bee so much as idly go through the motions, throwing a series of telegraphed punches before hitting the mat courtesy of stick-figure characters and pedestrian dilemmas. Try as it might to carve out its own personality, it feels like reheated leftovers from the showrunner’s smash UK hit.

Claiming to be inspired by real people who lived in this grungy corner of London, A Thousand Blows concerns Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby), a Jamaican immigrant who arrives in England with his mate Alec (Francis Lovehall) and promptly gets a front-row seat to a scam perpetrated by Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), in which she pretends to give birth on the street as her cohorts rob onlookers blind.

Hezekiah dreams of being a lion tamer at the city’s zoo, only to discover that the proprietor of that establishment has no animals and is mainly interested in turning Hezekiah into a captured-native attraction. Hezekiah and Alec additionally face racism when searching for lodging, but their luck changes when Hezekiah visits a hotel run by Lao (Jason Tobin) and proves that he can speak Chinese—thereby earning them a room in the lodge’s basement.

Thanks to a flyer, the duo visits the Blue Coat Boy Inn, where they’re treated to an illegal bare-fist boxing tournament that’s emceed by the boisterous Punch (Daniel Mays) and in which customers can win a pot of money by stepping into the ring against “Treacle” Goodson (James Nelson-Joyce) or his daunting brother—and the Blue Coat Boy’s owner—“Sugar” (Graham).

Since Alec is a fighter, he’s the first of them to give it a go, and takes a beating, Hezekiah, however, demonstrates that he’s up for the challenge, walloping the unbeatable Sugar so many times that Treacle has to step in to prevent his sibling from suffering a humiliating defeat. This infuriates Sugar to no end, and his ire is further ignited by the sight of Hezekiah being spirited out of the rowdy place by Mary, whom he loves.

With a strapping body covered in tattoos and a look in his eye that screams violence, Graham fumes with ferocity, turning Sugar into a wild one-man show. The rest of A Thousand Blows, unfortunately, is as straightforward as they come, full of cockney crooks doing the sorts of things that television and movies have long told us they do, and in the ways they always do them.

Mary is the leader of the Forty Elephants, a gang of female pickpockets, and she’s planning a big score: stealing a valuable gift that the Queen of England plans to deliver to a visiting Chinese dignitary. This is risky business that she believes will allow her to move up in the world and, perhaps, freely inhabit the posh social circles that she currently infiltrates under an alias. She’s a social climber, and therefore aligned with Hezekiah, who after seeing his lion-tamer dreams dashed, turns to pugilism and swiftly becomes a sensation—and, consequently, someone who catches the eye of a promoter interested in launching a legitimate boxing league.

A Thousand Blows invariably touches upon the question of whether class mobility is possible, all as it pits Hezekiah against Sugar and complicates Mary’s mission via the introduction of her mother and mentor Jane (Susan Lynch). Knight and company infuse this material with that good ol’ Peaky Blinders spirit, full of propulsive pacing, tough talk, and illicit schemes carried out by clever hoods. The problem is that even though the faces have changed, the shtick remains the same.

Worse, the series’ characters are a largely perfunctory lot. Mary is a no-nonsense independent conniver who falls for Hezekiah and winds up in various messes of her own making. Hezekiah, on the other hand, is a noble fish-out-of-water with eyes for Mary and a desire to make something of himself in this foreign land. Together, they fight the individuals, systems and prejudices that conspire to hold them down. Yet the London presented here is a surprisingly tolerant one—save for a couple of conspicuous instances of bigotry, Hezekiah is amazingly well-received by everyone, including high society—and they never seem to be in any actual danger, which means suspense is scarce.

There’s plenty of leering, jawing, grimacing, screaming, and growling in A Thousand Blows, as well as amputations, flesh biting, and neck stabbings that up the action’s grisliness. Still, despite Graham stalking his neighborhood like a vengeful goliath, there’s little compelling callousness and cruelty on display.

Knight’s series retreads unimaginatively, to the point that the front room of the Blue Coat Boy eerily resembles the bar owned by Tommy Shelby. Why the showrunner didn’t just make this tale a spin-off from his prior sensation is anyone’s guess, but it’s so similar that comparisons are inevitable, and inevitably unflattering.

Following its inconclusive conclusion, A Thousand Blows presents a trailer for its follow-up season, meaning that this story will continue for at least another six chapters, regardless of whether anyone takes to it. That’s a bold gambit which speaks to Knight’s clout and, particularly, the popularity of his previous foray into Victorian-era muck and malice. Those aren’t enough, however, to overshadow the been-here, done-that nature of this endeavor, whose sole calling cards are the magnetic Graham—who deserves to be the constant center of this saga’s attention—and its relative brevity.