peaky blinders s5
WHY PEAKY BLINDERS S5 IS BRIMFUL OF DARKNESS…
Small Screen goes on set of the peerless TV crime drama with Cillian Murphy.
Tommy Shelby is back on the bottle. Entering a wood-panelled office, and to his disgust finding an empty decanter, a suitedand-booted Cillian Murphy heads straight for a desk drawer, ferrets out some liquor and chugs it down. Is the Peaky Blinder getting blind drunk? Don’t you believe it. “It’s always been a thing with Tommy, this element of self-medication,” notes Murphy between takes. “But he’s of such incredible, intellectual depth and so relentless that he manages to function in spite all of that, which is crazy to think.”
On the first floor of the impressive Grade I-listed Bradford City Hall,
Small Screen has hunkered down by a monitor to watch a scene from episode four of the fifth series of
Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight’s hugely successful BBC drama about the rise of a Birmingham-based, family-run gang of bootleggers. Right now, we’re a long way from Brum. With the season beginning with the 1929 Wall Street Crash, we find Tommy continuing his quest for recognition – he’s now a Labour MP heading for the House of Commons. While he may be “doubly powerful”, as Knight puts it, Tommy is “struggling” nevertheless. “In other series, he’s always faced a nemesis – and in this one, he indeed has some powerful enemies,” says Knight. “But his biggest enemy is himself.”
COMMONS PEOPLE
The previous series saw the Shelbys deal with external forces, seeing off Adrien Brody’s vengeful New York mafioso Luca Changretta and his men. This year, however, “feels to me a little more about the inside of Tommy’s head,” says Murphy. “That’s fantastic to play.”
Fear not, Blinders isn’t about to put Tommy on the therapist’s couch – he’s instead heading to the corridors of power. “He takes to the House of Commons like a duck to water,” grins Knight, while Murphy adds, with a wink, “I think he enjoys the corruption!”
Today’s scene – directed, as are all of the episodes, by Anthony Byrne (Ripper Street) – is typical of the show’s deft interweaving of fact and fiction, as Tommy encounters real-life politician Oswald Mosley, a fellow Labour MP who infamously went on to become leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Playing Mosley is Sam Claflin
(The Hunger Games, Journey’s End), moustachioed, dressed in a threepiece suit and lighting up a cigarette. “Now that we’re going to be conquering the world together, we need to have no secrets,” he tells Tommy, as they prowl around each other. “They’re just sussing each other out,” Claflin later explains. “They’re two men who feel like they can use the benefits of each other, and therefore they’re trying to work how far they can push each other… he’s a man who sees the potential in Tommy Shelby as a politician.”
What about the other Shelbys? “Polly [Helen McCrory] and Arthur [Paul Anderson] are in their own way trying to escape, trying to get away from this, because it’s killing them,” informs Knight. “And the question is, ‘Can they get away?’” It all seems a long way from the days when the Peaky Blinders were slashing rivals with razor-lined caps. Will this season ratchet up the violence? “I don’t know how much I can say,” stammers Claflin. “It’s the Peaky Blinders! As much as I may not be involved in violence… at some point, there will be blood.”
UNCOMFORTABLY NUMB
Psychologically, the show is entering its darkest terrain yet. Take Tommy’s PTSD “numbness” from his days serving in World War 1. “Bit by bit, he’s starting to thaw out,” says Knight, “and that’s where the pain comes.” On a larger scale, he adds, “We’ve had the 1920s, the hedonism, the madness, the cocaine