• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 18, 2025

The grimy, muddy precincts of Ye Olde London -- the neighborhoods where a pedestrian walks in danger of being doused with garbage (or worse) from windows and balconies -- are the locale for another in a long line of TV series from this woebegone region.

The new one is “A Thousand Blows,” a drama set in the 1880s in the world of bare-knuckle fighting and the lowborn characters and criminals the sport attracted (assuming the series is based on fact).

Premiering Friday on Hulu, the show centers on a Jamaican immigrant who has just arrived in London with no experience in city living anywhere, and certainly not a city like London.

But the man, Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby, above photo), acclimates quickly as he recognizes the potential for opportunity in the muck and mire of the East End.

In a twist on Dickens (get it? “Oliver Twist”?), this show’s Fagin is a ruthless young woman known as Mary, Queen of the Elephants (for reasons not quite explained in the premiere episode previewed by the TV Blog).

Elephants or not, Mary (played by Erin Doherty) is the leader of a crew of other women of the streets who she has trained in the fine art of pickpocketing. 

But she is not only the leader of a band of female pickpockets. She is also the leading crime figure in the whole area, respected but also feared.

“A Thousand Blows” charges into the win column from the get-go. It opens with an elaborate con designed to create a distraction while the lady pickpockets make the rounds of gawking spectators relieving them of their pocket watches, billfolds and snuff boxes.

In recent years, TV has returned again and again to the London underworld spanning roughly 100 years.

In 2017, it was “Taboo” (BBC1 and FX), set in 1814. The show, selected by the TV Blog as the best new show of the year, starred Tom Hardy as a businessman abroad who returns to London after 12 years. 

Stephan Graham, who had a supporting role on that show, is co-star and executive producer of “A Thousand Blows.”

Other shows originating from the same dirty streets include “Penny Dreadful” (1891), “The Irregulars” (about a band of kids who assisted Sherlock Holmes in late-19th century Victorian London), “Peaky Blinders” (1880s to 1920s) and the 2018 adaptation of “The War of the Worlds” (1905).

“A Thousand Blows” premieres Friday, February 21, on Hulu.