Peaky Blinders (Season 6), BBC
Like Tommy Shelby, I have a confession to make. Before you ask – I haven’t killed anyone. My sin is far less devilish than that. In fact, depending on your POV, it isn’t necessarily a sin at all.
My admission is that I’ve never really bought into the Peaky Blinders hype. Maybe that’s because, as a genuine Midlander, I’m affronted by the majority of the cast’s attempts at a Brummie accent. Or maybe it’s because, akin to performing monkeys, me and my friend were once accosted by a group of southerners at Glastonbury festival because we ‘sounded like those Peaky Blinders off the telly’.
Either way, it’s never been a show that has really captured my imagination. I’m a fan of Steven Knight and think the cast are generally excellent, but I won’t be mourning the Shelby’s absence from my screens now that their nine-year sojourn has come to an end. That’s mostly because I feel that, like so many preceding crime series, it had fallen into the trap of becoming too clever for its own good.
Take this season for example, in which Tommy Shelby – in addition to running a multi-million crime empire and keeping both his family and himself in check – has been playing undercover agent for Churchill, a group of fascist MPs, the Boston mafia, and the IRA. I appreciate that this is a work of fiction but that’s beyond the capabilities of any man, let alone one from Birmingham (pardon the cheap gag).
Of course, the result of all this perceived cleverness is that the show has ironically become more and more silly. This was never more apparent than in its admittedly enjoyable finale, in which Tommy managed to thwart the machinations of his enemies because, well, reasons. Another issue is that, while it’s always good to see a wrong’un get their comeuppance, there are so many of them in Peaky Blinders that after a while it’s hard to care. Bring back Sam Neil I say.
That aside, it’s hard to deny the runaway success and broad appeal of Knight’s creation. On a superficial level alone, it is jam packed with great tunes (I’ll definitely miss hearing Red Right Hand every week), great outfits and a cool as f**k Cillian Murphy, and is (probably) deserving of the big screen send-off that has been promised. But I think the unwieldiness of this season’s plot was a clear indication that it’s the right time to put the flat caps away.