Knight plays a Blinder once again

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BBC 2, 9pm

BIRMINGHAM crime boss Tommy Shelby might just have bitten off more than he can chew as Steven Knight’s acclaimed saga Peaky Blinders returns for a fourth series. Cillian Murphy, who plays Tommy, said of the new action-packed run: “In the classic gangster arc, the last season was sort of all about the wealth, the house and all that material stuff. This season is sort of a return to the roots.”

At the end of the last series, set in 1924, we saw Tommy at what Knight has called the character’s “most nihilistic”.

Having ascended into high society from his humble beginnings in Small Heath, Tommy seemingly threw his own family under the proverbial bus of the law for the criminal acts he made in the effort to save his captured young son.

Every Shelby except Tommy was arrested at the leader’s luxurious countryside manor after they defied the Russians in a jewel heist and blew up a train. Whether or not they have all wriggled out of the charges will become clear, as the new series begins a year later in December 1925.

Thomas Shelby OBE has now acquired unprecedented legitimacy – but the gangster is a lonely man, estranged from his family and focused on business. However, when he receives a mysterious letter on Christmas Eve, he realises that his loved-ones and his empire are in danger of annihilation.

As the enemy closes in, Tommy flees his country house and returns to the only safe place he knows: Small Heath, the slum where he grew up. Facing a more determined and sophisticated threat than ever before, the Shelbys must put differences aside, take up arms and fight for survival.

There is a new danger lurking in Peaky Blinders and it’s the saga’s biggest threat yet.

So far, we know little of this new danger other than it is a new criminal organisation “of a different dimension”, headed by a ruthless crime boss (Adrien Brody), and according to Knight, it will represent the Shelbys’ “biggest threat” in the saga to date.

Knight is thrilled to have Oscar-winner Brody on board as the story develops. He says: “Adrien genuinely was the actor in my head when I wrote the part. I’m sure he will be a formidable presence.”

Knight says it was always his intention to make Peaky

Blinders a “between the wars” story beginning at the end of the First World War and concluding on the eve of the Second World War.

The writer revealed: “I hope it does run and run all the way up to the Second World War, but it does get harder to get the cast together as the actors are being pulled into feature films. It’s a victim of its own success.”

“This is a real passion project for me and I look forward to telling more stories of the Shelby family.” BBC 4, 9pm

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