A bottle of bootleg whisky if you can make sense of Peaky Blinders

Peaky Blinders ★★★★ Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy ★★★★

At 10pm last night the long-suffering viewers of primetime BBC1 turned to each other on their sofas and said, with one voice: ‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’

Bafflement has been commonplace all year. Readers have written and emailed me asking for explanations of everything from the psychological drama Chloe to the office thriller Rules Of the Game.

to which, half the time, I have to reply: ‘You tell me.’ the Beeb is currently taking delight in plots that are confusing, needlessly complex and contradictory.

If only I knew what was going on in Peaky Blinders (BBC1), I could perform a public service by providing crib notes. But in our house, this bloodthirsty 1930s crime serial is now known as Pleatly Bamboozled.

to start with, why is MP and gangland boss tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) sitting down to discuss an imaginary racehorse called Moral turpitude, with that IRA terrorist in a Che Guevara beret (Charlene McKenna)?

She had his Aunt Polly murdered, simply to annoy him. He seems to be trying to trap her into a poisoned deal with his enemies in the U.S. But once she agreed to a meeting alone at tommy’s pub, the Garrison, he could simply have shot her.

For that matter, why does the Garrison now stand under a double flyover? the original pub was blown up by a woman with a bomb in a pram. the Shelbys have rebuilt it...for some reason under Spaghetti Junction, which didn’t even open until 1972.

then there’s the question of Alfie Solomons, played by tom Hardy. tommy shot him in the head, two series ago, and even Alfie concedes he ought to be dead. Instead, he’s turned his back on crime and devoted his life to writing an opera, to be titled America.

Alfie claims, with murderous machismo, that he loves Puccini’s music because it reminds him of the screams of Italian soldiers as he bayoneted them in the trenches. It’s a pity Alfie never troubled to learn Italian. He might have realised that his victims were shouting ‘We’re on your siii-iiide!’ Italy fought with the Allies in the Great War.

But the truth is these inconsistencies don’t matter. Peaky Blinders is a resounding victory for style over substance. As long as the mist swirls, the distorted guitars clang, the fists fly and the characters continue to speak in spine-chilling riddles, we’ll be hooked.

‘the grey man says he’s coming for me and he’s coming for Daddy as well,’ groaned tommy’s little daughter, who hears voices and sees ghosts. ‘I will have no limitations,’ proclaimed tommy, between epileptic fits. ‘You’re still looking for trouble big enough to kill you,’ retorted his sister, Ada (Sophie Rundle).

If you can make sense of all that, congratulations. You win a bottle of bootleg whisky. But if you’re struggling to work it out, please don’t write to me.

Actor Stanley tucci was struggling to get past breakfast in Searching For Italy (BBC2). He sat down outside a cafe in

Rome’s trastevere district and ordered an espresso. the proprietor, Marcello, served up two croissants and four fried doughnuts, all bursting with whipped cream and egg whites — then stood over him, expecting to see Stan scoff the lot.

When you see headlines about the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, this isn’t the sort of food they mean.

What followed was platefuls of spaghetti with egg yolks and pork, oxtail meatballs, chicken gizzards and deep-fried artichokes, with plum ice cream in mashed potato for pudding.

A dedicated foodie, Stanley drooled over every bite. He’s going to need two seats on the aeroplane going home.