Tommy Shelby is alive… but possibly not for long
Peaky Blinders BBC1, Sunday Ireland’s Dirty Laundry RTÉ One, Wednesday
Donal’s Road Trip RTÉ One, Wednesday
The Great British Menu BBC1, Thursday
From the off, it was clear Tommy Shelby wasn’t dead, which is what we feared after the end of the last series of the BBC smash hit, Peaky Blinders – and, indeed, how could he be, since he is the foundation on which the entire drama rests? If I were to venture into clairvoyance, though, I would suggest his days are numbered, because this sixth series is the final one, and he either goes out with a bang or a whimper, and possibly both.
Not least because of the simmering resentment of Tommy’s cousin Michael, whose first act in the opening episode was to set fire to the caravan containing the remains of his mother, Aunt Polly (a plot point made sadly inevitable by the real-life death of the brilliant Helen McCrory). An immediate shift to four years later brought us to Miquelon island, off the coast of Newfoundland. There we learned Tommy had spent the intervening years in Paris and now was fluent in French, though Cillian Murphy’s low Brummie growl often makes you wonder if Tommy is even fluent in English.
One of the customers in a bar tries to make him take a drink, but Tommy is on the wagon. When the provocateur attacks him, Tommy says, ‘Since I foreswore alcohol, I’ve become a calmer and more peaceful person’ – then promptly draws a knife and a gun and starts shooting up the place. This being Peaky Blinders, where everything is about style over substance, and symbolism above all else, he manages to shoot a stray pigeon in startled flight.
As always, the show looks brilliant, its dark tones enlivened by very occasional flashes of colour, both physically and in the dialogue. The haircuts and fashions, for the men and women alike, once again will influence what you see in your local pub. Nevertheless, it was hard to shake the feeling, one hour in, that it all felt a little too self-referential. The process of jumping the shark has begun; or maybe, given the new location, jumping the whale.
Just as sombre, though this time closer to home and from the more recent past, was the first part of RTÉ’s documentary, Ireland’s Dirty Laundry. The story of the Magdalene laundries, it featured personal testimonies of the women who were incarcerated in them. It is an important part of our social history, because while the laundries indeed were run by nuns, the wider society was entirely complicit – the sheets and towels that were washed and ironed went to the homes of government ministers and businessmen, to State premises and posh hotels. No one really cared because the women were out of sight and out of mind, often for their entire lives, without pay and with no chance of parole.
The story has been told many times, and there was nothing new in this documentary especially since many of the contributors have spoken at length before but, for once, repetition is necessary. This is a story of cruelty that never can be told often enough, and at its heart one that betrays how a perverted view of maintaining morality can make those enforcing it the most immoral of all. The laundries forever will be woven into the shame of our nation.
On a much lighter note, Donal’s Road Trip saw Donal Skehan and his collie Max set off on a road trip around Ireland, starting in West Cork. Their first stop was at the Beacon in Baltimore, a tall white tower on a headland that once had a light to warn ships of danger. The light blew off, though, and everyone seems to have shrugged and gone, ‘Ah, sure it’s white, they’ll see it anyway,’ which rather fails to take into account the fact that night falls too. My heart was in my mouth as Max went a little too close to the cliff edge for comfort, but he survived to join Donal as he met food producers and baked what seemed like the most delicious brown soda bread run through with lumps of Gubbeen cheese.
Skehan is a deft presenter, and at least RTÉ is running this early in the year, giving us a chance to think about following in his footsteps.
Kathryn Thomas’s travels over the past two years were shown in late summer, which rendered them less useful than they might otherwise have been, which maybe explains why that series is being repeated on Thursdays.
On The Great British Menu two Scottish chefs were up against each other to represent their country in the grand final, which will see the winner cooking a banquet to celebrate the 100th anniversary of BBC broadcasting.
One of my favourite social media accounts is called We Want Plates, as it rails against the modern trend of serving chips in miniature shopping trolleys, salads in recycled jam jars and, on one occasion, seafood on a flip-flop.
In this week’s programme, a steak coated in charcoal was served on a miniature version of a coal mine to recall the first underground radio broadcast, while a banana dessert was served on a portrait of Billy Connolly, who used to wear banana boots, if you remember.
It was all hugely distracting, and yet more style over substance. As would be appropriate in the case of Peaky Blinders, there are times when less really is more.