A Thousand Blows (2024)
When best friends and very recent black immigrants, Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec (Francis Lovehall), first walk the grimy streets of London, they are confronted with a perplexing scene. An upper-class white woman has supposedly gone into labour on London’s dingy streets, attracting a crowd of bewildered businessmen. Soon another white lady, presumably a stranger, comes to her aid proclaiming herself to be a midwife and asking the gentlemen to avert their eyes while she examines the woman to find that she is about to give birth. But while the assembled white men are flummoxed and distracted, the astute and worldly black friends are not. Quickly they surmise that a con is being played as they spot 1, 2, 3, no more, nimble women deftly picking the pockets of the transfixed members of the crowd. But when one bystander announces that a police officer has been summoned at assist the labouring woman, the women quickly disperse, leaving behind a fake baby bump, deftly changing articles of clothing and walking in different directions into the densely populated city streets. We soon see them together again, walking further from the scene of their crime with different more masculine gaits that do not befit their genteel appearance. Meeting up, they descend in stride upon a dirty alley where a collection of their stolen goods is accumulated by the ringleader Mary Carr (Erin Doherty). Their accents too have been transformed announcing their lower class, marginalized identities which they no longer need to hide now that they are away from the crowd of businessmen whom they have silently swindled.
As we follow Hezekiah (Heze) and Alec who are pushed further east into a yet grimier neighbourhood of London, we come to understand that the racism is so pervasive that the task of finding lodgings becomes a monumental job in itself. In a poignant scene, an Irish proprietor turns them away because of their blackness despite admitting that his Irishness displaces him from acceptable English whiteness. Sadly, he openly discloses how the web of racism spreads and prevails since he is not about to anger his neighbours by allowing black clients in his establishment.
After Heze spots a discarded poster for a boxing competition he encourages Alec, who he refers to as “the Morant Bay Whirlwind,” to partake for the prize money. Importantly, Alec notes that it is Heze who is the better boxer. But Heze, intent on saving himself for his dream of becoming a lion tamer, persuades Alec to take up the pugilist challenge and enters a nearby lodging to inquire yet again for a room. Faced with another “no” from the Chinese male proprietor Lao (Jason Tobin) – a man with whom we have earlier seen Mary in conversation – the complexity of transatlantic identities is revealed when Heze entreats him by speaking Chinese and recalling his Chinese grandmother who had immigrated to Jamaica. Interestingly, Lao states that his initial resistance was not about Heze’s colour, but the lack of beds. It is in this way that Heze and Alec gain access to their first London “home”.
The lessons come hard and fast, as does the authentic Jamaican patois expressions and mannerisms. We happily laughed as we observed the many times that Heze and Alec kissed their teeth in disgust and the moment that Alec, after crawling through a basement window (since Heze told Lao he was alone), observes that their “room” is really a rat-infested cellar and exclaims “a wha dee bum bo Heze?” To which Heze replies, “a bum bo that’s free.” Profound moments of revelation abound also for the two outsider newcomers as when Heze says to Alec of his interaction with the Chinese Lao that “I think in London, everybody different to each other ya know, so when you meet someone even half the same as you, you come like dey you bradda.”
Meanwhile, the show quickly reveals that Mary is much more than a ringleader. She’s a gangster. Actually, she’s the queen of the forty elephants to be exact, an ambitious criminal mastermind with her sights set on climbing the ladder to bigger targets. Thus, when Sharkey Devenish (Elliot Warren) arrives spinning a tale about winning money at the races, she quickly surmises that the bills he waves in her face are the money he’s stolen from her, because they’re marked with hearts. Her response is to brandish a gun, push him onto the bed and command him to have sex with her. When he can’t perform (“because the gun isn’t helping”) she rams the pistol into his mouth and advises him of the lethal consequence of future deception.
By the night’s end, Heze and Alec find themselves in a rather filthy hall which combines, boxing, music, and dancing and where the red coat-wearing British regulars conjure flashbacks for Heze of their terrorizing of black Jamaicans back home. But in this somewhat democratic space, supposedly all comers are welcome to challenge the boxing champ to take home the prize pot. It is then when Heze and Mary come face to face as she teams up with gang member Esme Long (Morgan Hilaire) to pick his pockets. In the ensuing conversation-as-distraction, Mary learns of his ambition to become a lion tamer. But after warning him that Alec should not get in the ring against the champ Treacle Goodson (James Nelson-Joyce), to her dismay, Heze confronts her demanding that she return his two shillings that she “teef” from his pocket “just like your ladies did this morning when you did have your baby.” It is a brilliant moment of one-upmanship as Heze discloses (to a bewildered Mary) that he recognizes her as the not-so-pregnant woman from earlier in the day. So, you see, Mary who is accustomed to having the upper hand through a combination of smarts and violence has apparently met her match. Her reaction? After threatening to have Heze murdered and thrown in the river, she acquiesces and returns his money.
Sadly, when Heze (who believes that people make their own destiny) finally visits the zoo where he’d envisioned becoming a lion tamer, his hopes are shattered as he comes to understands that the owner intends to have him impersonate a colonial stereotype of an African while locked in a cage labelled “Wild Man of Africa”. As the zookeeper proffers an animal skin (which he expects Heze to wear) and machete (which he expects him to hold), Heze seizes the latter and briefly threatens him with it before proclaiming with disgust “cages are for animals!” Sitting alone outside in weary silence we witness Heze’s realization of the depths of British racism as he fingers his now solitary shilling (the other being spent on the entrance fee to the zoo). In the final scene of episode one, we see Heze return to the dingy entertainment hall to enter the ring as a challenger to yet another white male boxing champion. The series does an excellent job of representing the daily assaults of British racism as the boxing announcer introduces Heze as a shadow from Jamaica; the point being that many whites were incapable of acknowledging black people as embodied and sentient human beings. As episode one concludes, we are left in suspense, as Heze rises from his seat in the corner of the boxing ring to face his menacing white male opponent, Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham) while Mary looks on in anticipation and £-signs in her eyes.
A Thousand Blows is a compelling historical drama set in the squalid streets of East London where whites of all ethnicities and classes mixed with the people of colour (that Britain had colonized and enslaved) who they insisted belonged only to the lower classes because of their race. The costumes, accents, mannerisms, and settings are exceptional in their authenticity and the characters are engaging and unique, especially Heze and Alec. That the series centres the lives and distinctive culture of two black Jamaican men is a long overdue development in an English-language TV landscape in which blackness is almost always represented as African Americanness. Perhaps the last time we saw such rich and complex representations of black Caribbean life in post-emancipation England was when the esteemed author Andrea Levy’s book Small Island (2004) was interpreted as a mini-series of the same name in 2009.
Importantly, the series’ title refers to the physical blows of the boxing ring, but also to the vicious and ongoing psychic assaults to which Heze and Alec, two black Jamaican men, are subjected from the moment they disembark in England. The mean streets of London were hard on the lower classes, period. But another level of potential depravity, despair, and heartache awaited black outsiders like Heze and Alec whose very survival now seems to rest on Heze’s physical acumen in the boxing ring. This is surely one to watch!