PEAKY BLINDERS
BBC1, SUNDAY 27 FEBRUARY, 9PM
When Peaky Blinders first aired on BBC2 in 2013 – and Cillian Murphy’s 1920s Brummie gangster Tommy Shelby rode onto our screens on horseback, a Nick Cave song blaring out on the soundtrack – it felt like an instant cult hit. An average 2.5million viewers watched that first series, and word of mouth soon spread that this show really was something special, and not just because of the weird hairstyles and flat caps. Now, nine years and five series later, it’s a full-on global phenomenon, with celeb fans like Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, and this sixth and final series is one of the most intensely anticipated TV drama events of the year.
LOADED GUN
The last we saw of Tommy and his family of ruthless, violent gangsters in series five, he’d been elected as an MP and got heavily involved with fascist British politician Oswald Mosley. Winston Churchill, no less, inquired what the hell Tommy was doing, and Tommy told him he was deliberately working to undermine Mosley and his party from within. By the end of the series, he’d plotted the assassination of Mosley, but it went horribly wrong, and perhaps combined with his ongoing PTSD (he served as a soldier in WW1), Tommy seemed to arrive at the end of his tether, putting a gun to his own head. This series picks up immediately after that powerful moment, then jumps to a few years later in 1933, with Tommy very much alive and heading to North America to exploit the end of Prohibition. But he faces extreme new dangers.
THE BIG PICTURE
Peaky has always been a supremely ambitious, cinematic show, and the first episode of the new series underlines that epic quality. No wonder creator/writer Steven Knight plans on following this final series with a feature film. Of course, there’s a deep underlying sadness to the whole show now, after the tragic death last year of the great Helen Mccrory, who, in her role as Tommy’s aunt Polly, the family matriarch, was the formidable heart and soul of the series. Knight has honoured her memory, and the series opener more than delivers in every way possible. ★★★★★