Peaky Blinders

“If I catch this next train, I’ve got time for a Peaky Blinders when I get in,” said a colleague in the pub one evening, swiftly seeing off the dregs of a gin and tonic before grabbing her handbag and flying out of the place.  Picture the scene!  It’s not actually a true story though.  As we all know, whenever my workmates suggest a drink after office hours, I flat-out refuse so I can spend more time with my real friends: boxsets.  I also lost the ability to handle alcohol in 2014.  But there was a time a few months back when Peaky Blinders was the boxset of choice for all the folk back in my nine-to-five world, especially those in various stages of pre-married and married life, settling down buying homes in zone 17 and therefore commuting on timetabled trains (the best excuse for being late everyday there ever was).  Let’s unpick why people with stable, conventional lifestyles enjoy programmes about crime, shall we?

First, we must ask ourselves: what is a Peaky Blinder?  Well, my phone’s autocorrect would actually prefer that we called it a Pesky Blinder.  You change one letter and suddenly it’s like you’re at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode when the villain is unmasked and revealed to be harmless.  In fact, I don’t even really need the letter change.  Every time someone in the show unleashes a hail of bullets and quips “Courtesy of the Peaky Blinders” I’m transported to a world of Hanna-Barbera animation for children.  I just don’t deserve good television, do I?

The Peaky Blinders are a criminal gang run by the Shelby family, with the first series joining their story in 1919.  The accents that the cast approximate are brummie, as the show is set in Birmingham.  It’s nice to see Britain’s second city getting a bit of dramatic attention – it’s as if the place doesn’t get out much.  People claim it’s boring.  One of the very few decent talks I have been to in the media industry posed a good question about the city in light of billions being spent to improve its rail links to London.  Why not spend billions making Birmingham worth visiting in the first place?  It’s very unfair, as I once had the time of my life there at the Watch The Throne tour, including a night out at Gatecrasher that BEGAN with a bouncer throwing a clubber down the stairs after punching him.  Good times.

The Shelbys are big names thanks to their illegal activities.  Their services are very diversified.  They start with running unlicensed betting operations and racketeering, before branching into publicanism, owning and training racehorses, legal betting and various other forms of roughhousing.  In later series, there is legitimate trade as well as smuggling.  I even think there are some contract killings but things get very complicated so I just focus on enjoying the period scenery.  As time passes, the running tension comes from the desire to do one last big job before finally going straight.  So let’s see who these Shelbys are (focusing on those that are there at the beginning, as some relatives’ appearances constitute spoilers):

Tommy Shelby

Not the oldest Shelby brother, but he’s in charge due to having the largest face.  The large face comes courtesy of Cillian Murphy (star of my favourite film, 28 Days Later, even finding time to get his willy out in something about a ‘zombie’ apocalypse) and I would watch that face do anything.  He’s all about being so mad he might just be a genius, and his word is law.  I expect it was him that decided all the lads would have hipster haircuts.

Arthur Shelby

Tommy’s older brother, but he’s happier as a henchman (most of the time).  You can take a picture of him to the barber and come out with a really fresh fade.

John Shelby

This is the cheeky Shelby.  Joe Cole plays him as if he is about to sneeze the whole time, but let’s remember that history was a dusty place, so it makes perfect sense.  He probably has slightly better hair than Arthur, but it’s a tough choice.

Finn Shelby

The baby brother who is just a boy at the start, but soon gets old enough to join in with the haircuts.

Ada Thorne née Shelby

Yes, women are allowed in the family too.  This is the Shelby sister.  She doesn’t do a lot of the crime, but tends to serve as a plot device as and when suits.  Wears hats.

Polly Gray née Shelby

This is the Shelby clan’s aunt, played by the amazing Helen McCrory.  There’ll be a cigarette hanging out her mouth and she won’t take any nonsense, but there are moments of beautiful vulnerability with this character, while her relationship with nephew Tommy is at the heart of how the family is run.

It’s often those around the Shelbys that are the most interesting, though.  Chester Campbell, the antagonist of the earlier series, starts off sympathetically, but ends up a focus for all your hate, despite the most extravagant Northern Irish accent from Sam Neill.  Derby Sabini, the leader of an Italian gang in London is always a pleasure, while you feel there’s more to Esme Shelby (one of the wives) and Lizzie Stark (a former prostitute whom Tommy hires as his secretary) than you ever get to see.  Tom Hardy even pops in, but you know he’s having too much fun swearing and shouting for this to be one of his best parts.  Series four also has some big household names, but Netflix don’t have that yet so we can’t talk about it (and I forgot to watch it at Christmas).

In conclusion, it’s sometimes the background of Peaky Blinders that’s more interesting that the main story.  A lot of the show is made up of the gang walking along in slow motion, all period hats and manly swagger.  Who on earth are the ones in the background?  Maybe they do part-time peaky blinding.  These moments are triumphed, however, in the third season when the Shelby women go on strike and get their own slow-motion swagger with cool soundtrack.  The set design, though, is cracking.  You have a real sense of the grime in the period, though there does seem to be a factory that specialises in balls of flame, like some sort of hellfire manufacturer.

But this is stand-out British drama.  Each series of six episodes grows and builds the blinders’ peaky world, responding to real-life actual history.  The First World War’s conclusion precedes the show’s beginnings, bringing to life all that war poetry you did for GCSE (Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori, anybody?).  There’s a Winston Churchill (but a bit younger than the old duffer in The Crown).  There’s communism and the fight for home rule in Ireland.  In series three, loads of Russian aristocrats arrive fleeing the Revolution and cope with this loss by having lavish orgies which characters try and act in front of but you’re just watching the background in case you spot a bit of tit.

While it’s fun to be irreverent, I will finish by saying that this show is the peakiest of all the blinders.  It’s like Downton Abbey with indie music, only more happens.  Go to work, come back on the train, do an hour of wedmin, pay a bill or something, then settle down to live vicariously through history’s best-dressed criminal family.  You’ll sweat buckets screaming at the telly and praying Tommy can pull off his latest heist.  Just don’t get distracted wondering where he finds the time to get his haircut done so often.