Stephen Graham Fights Dirty In Trailer For Disney+ Victorian Boxing Drama A Thousand Blows

From Peaky Blinders to Spencer, See to Maria, and Locke to SAS Rogue Heroes, prolific writer-filmmaker Steven Knight has delivered and helped deliver some of the great dramatic haymakers in contemporary film and TV. And with his latest effort, upcoming 'inspired by true stories' Disney+ drama A Thousand Blows, the man from Brum is set to deliver some literal haymakers as he takes us — and stars Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty, and Malachi Kirby — into the murky world of illegal boxing circa late 1880s Victorian London. If it sounds like a recipe for a knockout, then the latest trailer confirms it looks like one too. Check it out below:

"London, the Lion's Den," intones Graham's bare knuckle brawler-cum-boxing empire overlord Henry 'Sugar' Goodson at the start of this new trailer, "Don't matter if you were raised here or you just got here... you learn to fight." As tone-setting opening gambits go, cockney geezer Graham talking game over shots of cobbled streets, limelights, and flexed lats is a hell of a statement of intent. And it looks like the fight is on in more ways than one here as we're set to see Graham's Big Smoke boxing world big-wig Sugar come up against Erin Doherty's Mary Carr — the self-described Queen of all-female criminal gang the Forty Elephants — and her new prizefighter, charismatic Jamaican-born heavyweight Hezekiah Moscow (Kirby). Cue racial tensions, simmering romances, rollicking fights under the big lights, and Graham swigging booze and menacingly threatening to kill folk like some kind of fin de siècle Combo.

Here's the official synopsis for the six-part series: "A Thousand Blows takes viewers back to the brutal East End of London in the 1880s. Hezekiah Moscow (Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), best friends from Jamaica, find themselves thrust into the criminal underbelly of London’s thriving bare-knuckle boxing scene. As Hezekiah finds fortune and fame through the art of pugilism, he attracts the attention of the infamous Queen of the Forty Elephants, Mary Carr (Doherty), who sets about exploiting his talents to further her criminal enterprise. Meanwhile the menacing and self-declared emperor of the East End boxing world, Sugar Goodson (Graham), determines to destroy Hezekiah whose ambitions to fight in the West End threaten everything he has built. What ensues is a battle of the old world against the new."

We can look forward to finding out whether Knight's latest is a total knockout — or if it has the dramatic equivalent of a glass jaw — when A Thousand Blows debuts on Disney+ on 21 February. Given the transformation Graham has undertaken for the show (more on that here), Knight's track record for making unmissable TV, and the fascinating world this series is set to dive into, we reckon we've got a best shows of 2025 contender in the making already. Ding ding!