There’s a moment halfway through Season 1 of Steven Knight’s East End caper “A Thousand Blows” where criminal mastermind Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) takes rising boxer Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) for a posh night out; she does this ostensibly to introduce him to a promoter (Ziggy Heath) who can get Hez into more society-friendly exhibitions — colorful belts and boxing gloves are just now replacing bare-knuckle brawls at the start of this Hulu series — in exchange for his help in pulling off a heist. Also to flirt a bit.

What convinces the Jamaican transplant, though, is seeing a performer (Jessica Reeve) do a trapeze act and cast the whole room under her spell. Dressed all in silver like a cross between a heron and a Greek goddess, she has power over everyone else at that moment, and her skin color isn’t something the English are looking down on but looking up at.