A Thousand Blows

A Thousand Blows began with Hannah Walters, who conceived the idea and took it to Steven Knight. Knight wrote and ran the series, returning to the ground he mapped in Peaky Blinders, working-class crime and violence as a way of making a living, but moving the action south to Victorian London. It was produced by The Story Collective with Matriarch Productions and Water & Power, premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2024 and arrived on Disney+ (Hulu in the US) in February 2025. A second series, shot before the first had aired, followed in January 2026.

The setting is the East End of the 1880s. Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) arrives from Jamaica with his friend Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), hoping to become a lion tamer, and finds himself caught between two powers: Stephen Graham's Henry "Sugar" Goodson, who controls the area's bare-knuckle boxing, and Erin Doherty's Mary Carr, leader of the Forty Elephants, a real all-female gang of shoplifters and confidence tricksters. Tinge Krishnan, Nick Murphy, Coky Giedroyc and Ashley Walters directed the first series, Katrin Gebbe and Dionne Edwards the second. Federico Jusid wrote the score, and Maja Meschede's costumes give the period a worn, lived-in texture.

Lucy Mangan gave the first series five stars in The Guardian. At the 2026 BAFTA Television Awards it collected seven nominations, including Drama Series and Leading Actress for Doherty, and won for Costume Design. It is also nominated for Best Drama Series at the 2026 International Emmy Awards.