HBO’s Warrior returns for another bout of blood-soaked martial arts

Based on an idea by Bruce Lee, the new season starts as it means to go on – with extreme violence
Chinatown tongs, madams and gangsters battle for supremacy in late 19th century San Francisco

Stephen McCarty

Published: 9:45am, 27 Sep 2020

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Racism has a long and ignoble history as a pillar of American law enforcement. But San Francisco in the late 1870s had bigger problems than bigoted policemen and their venal city hall overseers, or even gangs of rough-hewn Irish labourers promulgating, with clubs, knives and dynamite, the anti-“coolie” and “yellow peril out” message.

As we return to the emerging city by the bay for the explosive second series of period thriller Warrior , San Francisco is just a swinging nunchaku away from a civil war of the tongs, as rival organisations face off over the highly profitable opium trade. This and other economic interests are threatening to blow open a tense Chinatown, then smear the violence all over the streets beyond.

Based on an embryonic pitch for a television show by the god of martial arts himself, Bruce Lee, and revived by daughter Shannon, Warrior is driven by its own flying-fists kung fu fighter in the form of Japanese-English leading man Andrew Koji. As Chinese immigrant Ah Sahm, he has crossed the Pacific Ocean in search of his sister, Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), only to find she has become the scheming, ruthless leader of a tong radically opposed to his own.

Starting on October 3, at 10am on HBO Go and Cinemax, season two kicks off where season one ended – and as it means to continue – with extreme violence while turning the set piece spotlight onto Koji’s exemplary skills as a precision weapon. And whatever the proportion of actual martial arts to choreography, the fights always look sinew-rippingly realistic.

Olivia Cheng returns as mamasan Ah Toy, who outshines the girls in her charge and has her own, lethal take on the racially motivated barbarity. Hoon Lee is back as tricky businessman Wang Chao, goods supplier to all sides and beholden to none; Dean Jagger once again dons the flat cap of beefy, brutish Irish workingmen’s leader Dylan Leary; and Joe Taslim, as Ah Sahm’s nemesis Li Yong, remains boss of the most frightening eyebrows ever to signify evil on a martial artist’s face. All have their reasons for chasing a version of the American dream.

Raucous, hazardous, with an almost tangible grubbiness, the cobbles and stinking alleys of Warrior bring the streets of old San Francisco triumphantly to life. Who cares if they’re a set in Cape Town?

The Boys are back in town on Amazon Prime

Karl Urban (centre) stars as Billy Butcher in The Boys. Photo: Handout

Everything comes with a warning these days: cover your eyes and/or ears if you’re sensitive to strobe lights, news reports, the history of the world, Liam Gallagher.

So if you’re a superhero groupie look away now, because The Boys are back in town and up to their usual tricks in savagely taking down all the caped, helmeted and otherwise freakish do-gooders in their way.

Based on a comic book, The Boys (Amazon Prime, second series new episodes landing Fridays until October 9) is a black-humour attack on the most profitable genre on screens large and small, and one that isn’t stingy with viciousness. The boys in question, led by Karl (“Dr McCoy”) Urban as the fittingly named Billy Butcher, are superhero-hating anti-heroes out to cut down the less-than-magnificent Seven.

Calling the Seven’s shots is Homelander (Antony Starr), a satirised Superman and secret sociopath, despite his star-spangled saviour’s uniform. Homelander, a moral vacuum, has earned Butcher’s everlasting bile by raping his wife; his colleague, Translucent, just seems like a vacuum – he’s invisible.

The blood begins flowing early and makes for a gore-fest of unparalleled fun, provided you’re not easily offended.

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