A Thousand Blows; EastEnders

“Some will come for the boxing. The Peaky Blinders creator, Steven Knight, has set his latest endeavour in the East End of London and the shadowy underworld of late‑Victorian bare-knuckle fighting. The new series is called A Thousand Blows, and this is an understatement. Some will stay away because of the boxing. This would be a mistake, because it is about so much more. It is about all kinds of violence – that perpetrated against children by those supposed to protect them, against the increasingly poor by the increasingly rich, against women by men, against the colonised by colonisers – and what happens when you throw people together in the melting pot of a rapidly industrialising city where only the fittest can survive.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“If you can get past the sickening blows in their thousands (and we can’t say we weren’t warned) then this is blockbuster television. Knight is not normally one for subtlety, but here even the plot about the Jamaican immigrants fuelled by loathing of their red-coated colonial oppressors is deftly handled. The historian David Olusoga is listed as an executive producer and anyone who has read his excellent Black and British – A Forgotten History will sense his guiding hand. History and issues, however, are grace notes compared to the chorus of wonderful characters, and it’s with its roster of ne’er do wells that A Thousand Blows hits the jackpot. Peaky Blinders propelled Cillian Murphy to the Hollywood A-List and a Best Actor Oscar. A Thousand Blows might just do the same for Erin Doherty. Her Mary Carr is a cockney Boudicca with a killer stare, an instant feminist icon (who would probably laugh hard and then shoot you if you told her that). She steals whatever she wants, including the show and probably next year’s Bafta statuette. It is a sensational performance in a captivating, lawless stampede of a TV show.
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“This six-parter stands on its own two feet and never feels derivative or unimaginative. As usual, Knight uses real historic people and stories from which to weave his own web and this version of 1880s London heaves with life (though the Disney mega-budget does give a certain unwelcome gloss to the otherwise meticulously designed sets). Each character, from the Chinese hotel proprietor to the Harrods shop assistant desperate to join the Elephants to the local communist agitator, gets their own inner worlds and storylines fleshed out, somehow without overcomplicating the plot.”
Emily Baker, The I

“What this series does so viscerally is bring alive the grime, chaos, danger and cunning but also the sheer energy of the East End, where if you don’t have it, you take it. The attention to detail in the fight scenes and elsewhere supercharges this realism, as do sturdy smaller performances. Daniel Mays is as convincing a 19th-century East End pub landlord as you’re likely to see. He is underused.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Storylines aside, though, the main takeaway of the episode was how extraordinarily proficient it all was. The performances and execution were flawless. Not a single thing went wrong. It is the first time that EastEnders has properly nailed a live episode. So while it might not have been particularly memorable, from a technical standpoint this was a clear demonstration that EastEnders knows exactly what it’s doing. The hope must have been that this experiment would put more eyeballs on EastEnders. Regardless of what happened in the episode itself, you’d have to hope that it works. It might no longer be the ratings behemoth it once was, but this was proof that EastEnders still has an awful lot to be proud of.”
Stuart Heritage, The Guardian

“There were no gimmicky bells and whistles, just half an hour of nerve-jangling drama that essentially boiled down to a series of two-handers between Martin (James Bye) and Stacey (Lacey Turner), culminating in a brave and bold demise that will change the course of Walford history.”
Jonathan Hughes, The I

“The live episode was a very good effort all-round despite comical shilly-shallying of the emergency services in the background. You wouldn’t really have known it was live. That it went so smoothly is a testament to the proficiency of soap actors and the crew (whatever the snobs say). Yes it helps to set such episodes in trauma situations so that if you forget your lines you can just scream, but still. I suspect, though, viewers aren’t as excited about the live element of soaps as producers think. Yes there is added buzz but I suspect the viewer thrill is in the prospect that someone might mess up. That there was no slip in a very meaty, risky episode probably meant drinks all round. But not in the Queen Vic.
Carol Midgley, The Times

“There has been all manner of misty-eyed documentaries, vintage reruns and bonus content. Fans have enjoyed endless character comebacks - most notably, last night’s shock cameo from original Queen Vic landlady Angie Watts (Anita Dobson). After 37 years away, Ange appeared in a ghostly vision to her injured daughter Sharon (Letitia Dean). Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) returned just in time to see brother Phil (a moving performance from Steve McFadden) sectioned after a suicide attempt. The ending we all feared. Hearts are breaking. Lives are shattered. Will Walford ever be the same again?”
Michael Hogan, Telegraph