Back in 2001, Donald Trump – then just a strangely coiffed hotelier – needed an act for a new venue in Atlantic City. He gambled on mixed martial arts (MMA), a sport that had been condemned as “human cockfighting” by his fellow future Republican presidential nominee John McCain. But in the blur of fists and knees, elbows and headlocks, Trump recognised the extant savagery of the human condition. It is a bloody world descended directly from the backrooms of Victorian pubs, like those that form the seething backdrop to Disney+’s new period thriller, A Thousand Blows.
London in the 1880s: the Victorian age is coming towards its end; modernity beckons. And yet in the backstreets of east London, a lawless society still reigns. At its summit is Mary Carr (The Crown’s Erin Doherty), the leader of the Forty Elephants, a notorious gang of female thieves who earn their keep “without recourse to the obvious.” Mary might be Queen in these ends, but she’s indebted to her mentor, brutal pugilist Sugar (Stephen Graham), who is champion of the local boxing ring. Their ability to share power is thrown into question by the arrival of two young Jamaican men: aspiring lion tamer Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his companion Alec (Francis Lovehall). Within hours of stepping off the boat from the Caribbean, Hezekiah has come to the attention of both Mary and Sugar, and, for better or worse, finds himself bound to the course of their fortunes.
