A Decade in Birmingham: Ten Years of Peaky Blinders.
"In the bleak midwinter..."
North of London, you’ll find the city of Birmingham. Thick with industrial smog, riddled with desperation, filled with men and women both, who are proficient in deceit and corruption.
One of those men is Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and under his command are the Peaky Blinders. A street gang, aptly named, for the razor blades tucked neatly into their caps.
Some say, when Tommy came home, as a tunneller from underneath the blood-soaked fields of Flanders, he returned a different man.
Hardened. Cold. It is 1919 now though and the war is over.
It is time to look ahead. To take what is rightfully his.
But conflict always looms.
In hindsight, it is impressive just how fully formed Peaky Blinders was, right from its opening title card.
It is something you don’t really expect when you go back to the beginning of a series, especially something heavily serialized.
Characters and overall narrative concepts will further develop and mature as a show gains steam, as will the the writing and performances that accompany them. We know that going in.
These things are rarely linear, after all.
Where you start, on a fundamental, artistic level, won’t be where you finish and no creative enterprise is going to be firing on all cylinders right from the jump.
Peaky Blinders though, just might be the exception.
And part of that, I think, is due to timing.
See, when the show premiered, in September of 2013, it arrived in a much different world than many of its television contemporaries did.
The medium was no longer considered something of a curiosity when it came to delivering effective, engaging storytelling and with that shift, came heightened expectations.
Such thinking was a product of the early-through-mid 2000s, in which debuted many of the most acclaimed television properties ever made, radically altering the perception of what the the small screen could achieve, specifically on a dramatic level.
Consider this: two weeks after Peaky Blinders began?
Breaking Bad ended.
Talk about a tough act to follow, eh?
But while Walter White’s story was told over 62 episodes, Peaky Blinders, in comparison, feels almost self-contained (more so when you remember Breaking Bad was the jumping off point for a larger franchise: prequel series Better Call Saul and the sequel film, 2019’s El Camino).
Instead, over 39 episodes and six seasons, you’re never given the impression that Peaky Blinders is trying to reach beyond its grasp or artificially expand its narrative boundaries past self-imposed limitations.
Rather, it merely builds, methodically, beat-by-beat, on what came before.
This can be seen as early as the pilot episode and throughout the first two seasons as a whole.
In those early episodes, we spend much of our time in Small Heath, the neighbourhood in Birmingham that the Peaky Blinders call home.
They’re looking to expand their operations, with an eye towards legitimacy, while also understanding that coming to blows with their opposition will often end up solving a fair amount of their problems.
Whether that is dealing with pressure from opposing criminal organizations or trying to navigate the fallout from a shipment of stolen guns, which quickly attracts attention from the more morally grey areas of the government at large? Not to mention navigating their challenging personal lives.
And it works, incredibly well.
The show doesn’t stay there however, not really, as you might expect but it never loses the core conceit either, that consistent story/character driven focus that made it so strong from the get-go.
Unlike say, Outlander, which was beholden to the tricky art of adaption and openly struggled to recapture its narrative form post-season two, Peaky Blinders, which was created and overseen creatively by writer-director Steven Knight, always works to provide a through line.
From fixing horse races in Small Heath, we go to London, where the cons get bigger and more threatening and from London, to the arenas of political intrigue that were impossible to escape in the mid 20th-century, yet rife with danger all the same.
Without fault? Nothing ever is.
The fourth season, in particular, lacks that same sense of narrative confidence and structure, often to its deterrent. But overall, it comes across as a low-point, not a momentum killer, a recovery the shows handles to surprising effect.
Ultimately, everything, from the smaller storytelling moments, to the period-piece driven eccentricities are left to be shouldered by the work of the show’s ensemble cast.
And what incredible work they do.
At the heart of it all, of course, is Murphy’s Tommy Shelby.
From the moment we meet him, he is driven to achieve the success he believes he is due. A man haunted by violence yet not above committing a great deal of it.
He is both cold and ruthless (he is a gangster, after all) but equally so, in his own way, cares immeasurably for his family and loved ones. Yet it is almost transactional, love, leveraged with the perquisite of knowing that such loyalty will eventually be repaid when called upon.
He is a man that is, seemingly, three steps ahead wherever he goes, always in control - expect when he isn’t, forced to confront difficult truths he would rather keep hidden.
Tommy is, often by design, restrained by his own characterization but there is nothing restrained about Murphy’s performance, who brings humanity to every line and delivery, every inflection. Every moment in which it seems something beyond the audience’s comprehension is lurking, just outside our field of view.
Murphy is one of the most accomplished actors of his day. But Peaky Blinders is, perhaps with the exception of his turn as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the best work of his career. Hands down.
Yet, in contrast to Oppenheimer, which placed Murphy at the centre and had strong portrayals exist just outside of the primary narrative sphere, Blinders makes sure to highlight its large cast, allowing many of its performers the opportunity to make a similar claim to Murphy’s - career best work:
The late Helen McCroy is magnificent as Polly Gray, Tommy’s aunt, a woman who alternates between confidante and adversary depending on the moment, a divide that may have bedevilled others but something McCroy plays perfectly, a masterclass in dramatic excellence.
Paul Anderson as Tommy’s older brother and right hand, Arthur. Tormented by his time in the First World War, he is a man who does not hesitate to engage with various vices and destructive behaviours, while questioning both his relationship to violence and wiliness to engage in so much of it. Anderson, skillfully, brings both depth and brutal emotional honesty to a role, that on the surface, could be easily maneuvered. He proves it couldn’t be.
Tom Hardy as Alfie Solomons, a dangerous, unpredictable and tremendously intelligent London-based crime boss, with whom Tommy comes to know and later realizes is not as brash as he leads others to believe. It is, for my money, a character that Hardy alone could portray, if only because he’s done it before: a terrifying strength, complimented by an unnerving charisma. Not many could pull it off. Hardy does with ease.
As Ada, the lone Shelby sister, Sophie Rundle strikes a balancing act that, at first, seems almost impossible. Her character, struggling with her place not just “in the family” but in the world at large as well. Yet her progression, her confidence, comes in time and Rundle plays it to a tee.
Annabelle Wallis as Grace, Sam Neil as Inspector Campbell, Joe Cole’s John, Natasha O'Keeffe’s Lizzie, Aimee-Ffion Edwards’s Esme and Finn Cole as Micheal Gray.
Sam Claflin, in a performance for the ages, as real-world politician Oswald Mosley. Itself, an uncomfortable but necessary reminder of history that such a portrayal raises, in both broader themes and a specific reality that continues to rear its ugly head.
The list goes on.
The show, stock full of character work and storytelling acumen that easily places it in the pantheon, the pinnacle, of the “Golden TV” age it wouldn't have existed without.
An impressive accomplishment, of that, there is no doubt.
The only question is, what’s next?
Peaky Blinders ended with its sixth season in 2022 but creator Steven Knight later confirmed that, like Breaking Bad before it, the show will have an epilogue film to tie off any loose ends.
And perhaps, provide a more conclusive ending for those characters that maybe didn’t see as much time in the spotlight as they could’ve, as the show’s ending loomed.
With that knowledge in hand during that sixth season, you can definitely see the groundwork being laid - although, remarkably, it doesn’t take away from what is conclusively presented, although the seams due begin to show.
When the film itself will see the light of day though, is still something of a question mark.
Speaking to GQ in May, Murphy revealed he’d yet to see a script, so it is fair to imagine the movie itself won’t arrive for a while yet, if it all within the next few years.
But even without it, Peaky Blinders can stand on its own.
Not perfect, nor without criticism but wholly durable and confident in its creative stance.
It is hard to find.
But when you do find it, you best appreciate it. And if you haven’t? You’re missing out.