“You seem to be everywhere…and everyone.” So says Victoria Davies (Aliyah Odoffin), the African-born goddaughter of Queen Victoria herself, to Mary Carr. Or “Augusta,” as Victoria knows her. Or “Lady Farnley,” as Mary’s calling herself in the high-society dinner theater where the conversation takes place, before the wondering eyes of her date, Hezekiah Moscow. At that moment it’s not clear which he’s more shocked by: Victoria, a Black woman from Lagos who’s nigh unto English royalty, or Mary, who managed to bullshit her way into that same social sphere by sheer force of will.
If there’s a throughline to this episode of A Thousand Blows, it’s that Mary is many things to many people; sometimes she’s many things to the same people. In Hezekiah’s case, she’s the glamorous and gorgeous master criminal who could be his ticket to fame as a legitimate boxer. He hopes to become as powerful and free as Miss Lala (Jessica Reeve), the Black trapeze artist who’s the theater’s main attraction.
But Mary’s also the thug who dislocated his fingers to keep him under her thumb, to use in a still undisclosed role in her heist of the Queen’s gifts to her Chinese visitors. After their night out on the town, Hezekiah agrees to take the job, for double the asking price. (Mr. Lao also joins the crew, but only after he recognizes a name on the guest list from the Chinese delegation, no doubt connected to his conspicuously absent wife and child.)
Mary has a similarly complex relationship with Sugar Goodson. We learn in this episode that they met when she was orphaned in a workhouse; Sugar, a workhouse kid himself, had by that point made his way in the world and often took mercy on children like her. But their relationship has since obviously soured. Now, between her patronage of his nemesis Hezekiah and her relationship with Saul Woolfe, the anarchist whose accidentally lethal bombing of a Tory headquarters has the cops turning Sugar’s neighborhood upside down, she’s both a heartache and a headache. By the end of the episode, her failure to turn over or turn away the wounded Woolfe has the police ransacking his establishment in retaliation.
The other criminal women in her circle share mixed feelings about her and her rule over the Forty Elephants. Eliza, Woolfe’s lover, ultimately chooses Mary over him, though she and Mary help save his life first via a gruesome arm amputation. Esme (Morgan Hilaire) secretly breaks Mary’s prohibition against trying on stolen merchandise, but only behind closed doors; her budding relationship with Hezekiah’s countryman and boxing trainer Alec is another no-no she’s keeping under wraps. Belle (Jemma Carlton) openly resents Mary affection for newcomer Alice Diamond, who plays a piviotal role job as maid to Lady Grace (Maeve Dermody), the disabled and neglected wife of the man whose party they plan to rob.
Mary’s most fractious relationship of all is with her own mother, Jane (Susan Lynch), a major underworld figure in her own right whom we meet as she trains children in the art of pickpocketing. Though she maintains a room in her sprawling building for her daughter, she has no respect for Mary, whom she accuses of turning her back on her family in favor of Sugar Goodson. She all but threatens to play spoiler to Mary’s big scheme; Sugar later implies to Mary he’d be just fine with encouraging Jane to do so, while Eliza seems to think it’s all but guaranteed. But neither Mary nor Sugar got where they are without self-confidence in the face of long odds.
The same of course is true of Hezekiah, but he hasn’t yet had the chance to parlay his willpower into actual success the way the Queen of the Elephants and the King of the East End have managed to do. Despite being a physically striking guy, actor Malachi Kirby is still visibly holding much of his magnetism in reserve; Hezekiah, who can’t run long distances without collapsing from a stitch in his side, similarly needs to train himself in the art of swagger before Kirby can be free to command the screen the way Erin Doherty and Stephen Graham do. A Thousand Blows isn’t a perfect show — some dialogue (“Most men feel threatened by ambition in a woman.” “I am not most men.”) feels a bit undercooked, and the teal-and-apricot color palette can be grating. But the smart choices of its talented cast have me looking forward to each new round.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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