‘A Thousand Blows’ Season 2 Review: A Darker, Deeper Return to London’s East End

It is not the most common scenario, but some series do end up being better in their second season than in their first. Among them are canonical examples like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos. There are several reasons why this happens. One of the most frequent is that first seasons tend to be overly constrained by the need to make an immediate impact: to grab an audience quickly, to hook them with relative ease, and to guide them firmly so they do not lose interest, get distracted, or drift away. In the case of Steven Knight — the creator of Peaky Blinders — that kind of structure often brings out his more “basic” instincts early on: sweeping camera movements, action everywhere, relentless audiovisual impact and the full array of technical and dramatic flourishes he knows how to deploy to pull viewers in. Those instincts, however, often obscure what his series do best: the worlds they build and the characters who inhabit them.

The second season of A Thousand Blows benefits enormously from the groundwork already laid. The heavy lifting has been done. We understand the universe in which the story unfolds, so there is no need to restate or summarise it every ten minutes; we have a solid grasp of who the characters are and how they operate; and there is an implicit trust that anyone who has made it this far is already minimally invested and does not require constant fireworks to avoid switching off (or, these days, switching platforms). Scenes are longer, subplots are murkier and more layered, and the narrative does not always move forward like a runaway train. By mid-season, there is a distinct sense that the series has achieved something many aim for but few manage: it makes the viewer feel as though they already live in this place; that they know its streets, its secrets and its people; that its rivalries and internal tensions matter; that its characters and their struggles have real weight.

When that happens, plot becomes secondary — at least in the conventional, algorithm-driven sense of recent television. There is no ticking clock or clearly defined end goal announced from the outset. There are problems to solve, missions to carry out, confrontations to survive, but no constant piece of narrative clockwork pushing things along. Season two works like the songs placed in the middle of an album or a rock concert: perhaps not the hits, not the tracks that get radio play, but the ones where the band sounds most comfortable, most cohesive, most free from obligation. For true fans, those are often the best moments of a live show.

A Thousand Blows finds its characters at their lowest point following the deeply bleak ending of the first season. We return to the same dark, oppressive and dangerous East End of late nineteenth-century London, populated by criminal gangs, corrupt police officers, organised crime and illegal boxing rings. Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham) is no longer the all-powerful gangster-boxer, but a broken alcoholic drifting through the streets. Mary Carr (Erin Doherty — his co-star in Adolescence, where she played the boy’s psychologist) no longer rules the criminal underworld with her all-female gang, the Forty Elephants. Nor is Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) the boxing champion he once was; he is back to bare-knuckle fighting, for money or survival. All three have been knocked down by life — or by the writers — and must now start again. That, in essence, is what the second season is about.

Mary Carr becomes even more central to the story than before — and Doherty, now an Emmy-winning star, shines even more brightly — as the season follows her attempt to reclaim her “throne” as queen of the local underworld, devising a new plan centred on the theft of a valuable Caravaggio painting. Sugar manages to give up drinking and tries to build a quieter, more stable life by looking after his brother and his family, shaped by the consequences of the previous season. Meanwhile, the Jamaican-born Moscow is consumed by his obsession with avenging the death of his best friend and, giving more oxygen to the series’ political dimension, by becoming something akin to a defender of abused immigrants, both in England and back home. Boxing plays a smaller role this time around, but his unexpected opportunity to train a member of the British royal family sends his life in an unforeseen direction.

Through these three narrative strands, the second season gradually assembles a panoramic view of the harsh, impoverished London of the era: police officers meddling to manipulate outcomes, criminal gangs losing their leaders, revenge plots that lead nowhere, characters tempted into betrayal, unfiltered racism and sudden eruptions of violence that shake things up whenever Knight feels a jolt of impact is required. It is not that the creator of House of Guinness — another series with similar growth potential — has abandoned his populist instincts. A Thousand Blows remains an action-driven crime drama, treating late nineteenth-century London much as 1970s New York has been treated on screen. The difference is that Knight now allows himself to expand sideways rather than simply charging forward, stepping off the main narrative motorway to explore the more colourful side roads. Even so, he knows that from time to time, something still has to blow up.

The quasi-romantic triangle that structured much of the first season — between the two men and Mary — has largely receded into the background, almost disappearing for long stretches. The intersections between the three characters have less to do with romance or even boxing, and more with the internal logic of the violence that governs the area. A clash with the Jeremies gang brings them together, as does a chance street encounter and, later on, Mary’s renewed criminal activities. Each in their own way, they are three outsiders trying to work out how to survive in a hostile world that ignores them, exploits them and beats them down.