After a decade, 30 episodes, countless grisly beatings and murders, some exact accents and some dodgy ones, endless Nick Cave, plenty of snazzy tailoring and some of the most severe haircuts on TV, the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders (BBC One) is upon us. Creator Steven Knight has plans for a film, but as far as the small-screen is concerned, this is the finale. It’s the end of one the most distinctive, inventive and entertaining dramas in recent British history, as you may have gleaned from the blanket trailers over the past few months. The entrenched BBC can’t be expected to soft-pedal a rare thing: an international hit that enjoys genuinely popular appeal as well as critical acclaim.
The Peaky aesthetic has become so familiar, at least to anyone who has been to a racecourse in the past few years, that it is easy to forget what a strange and unpromising prospect the series seemed at first. Here was a stylised epic British gangster western, set in under-loved Birmingham in the years after the First World War, with abundant violence, drink, drugs, fags and sex, set to a soundtrack of modern rock music. When they are portrayed on screen, interwar years are usually seen unfolding in stately homes, not the raggedy terraced backstreets of Small Heath, Birmingham. But this idiosyncratic style, held together by Cillian Murphy’s flawless lead performance as the antihero mob boss Tommy Shelby, is precisely what has made Peaky Blinders such fun. Thanks in part to Netflix, which syndicated it from the BBC and spread it round the world, the series has evolved from a curiosity to a phenomenon.
