Peaky Blinders (2013) Review: Gangster Myth in Slow Motion

Is Peaky Blinders worth watching?

Yes. Peaky Blinders is a stylish, confident British crime saga that turns a real Birmingham street gang into modern mythology, and Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby is one of the great television leads of the 2010s. The show’s mix of period grit, rock soundtrack and family drama gives it an identity few crime series can match. The main reservation is that its later seasons lean harder on style and repetition than the tightly plotted early years.

What is Peaky Blinders about?

The story opens in Small Heath, Birmingham, in 1919. Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) has come home from the trenches of the First World War colder and more calculating than the man who left, and now runs the Peaky Blinders, a family gang named for the razor blades sewn into the peaks of their caps. They make their money from illegal betting and protection, but Tommy wants far more than the backstreets. When a shipment of stolen guns lands in the gang’s orbit, it draws the attention of a ruthless police inspector (Sam Neill) sent to recover them, and Tommy sees an opportunity rather than a threat.

Around him are his volatile older brother Arthur (Paul Anderson), his sister Ada (Sophie Rundle), and the family’s formidable matriarch, Aunt Polly, played with enormous authority by the late Helen McCrory. Natasha O’Keeffe plays Lizzie, a character who grows in importance over the seasons.

Peaky Blinders was created and written by Steven Knight. It is a British series in English, first broadcast by the BBC and now widely streamed on Netflix. This review covers the complete run of six seasons and 36 episodes; the series has ended.

Cillian Murphy makes stillness menacing

Murphy’s performance is the show’s centre of gravity. Tommy barely raises his voice, and the actor uses those famous pale eyes and a clipped Brummie delivery to suggest a man whose calm is a lid on something catastrophic. The war hangs over him in flashes of trauma that the show treats seriously, and across six seasons Murphy lets the character’s ambition and self-destruction grow in step without ever making him easy to root for.

The supporting cast gives the Shelby family its volatility. Paul Anderson’s Arthur is all raw nerves and violence, a tragic counterpoint to his brother’s control. McCrory’s Polly is the one person who can match Tommy in a room. And from the second season, Tom Hardy’s scene-stealing Jewish gang boss Alfie Solomons adds an unpredictable comic menace that the show clearly relished.

Style as storytelling

Few period dramas have been so determined to feel modern. The soundtrack sets Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand, used as the theme, beside contemporary rock, and the gang’s slow-motion walks through smoke and sparks have become visual shorthand for the whole genre. The industrial Birmingham of the show is less historically precise than it is expressionistic: furnaces, canals and rain-slick cobbles shot like a western town.

That approach works because Knight pairs it with real interest in the period. Post-war trauma, class resentment, Irish politics, the Romani heritage of the Shelbys and the rise of organised crime all feed the plots, giving the swagger something to push against.

Where the empire overextends

The first three seasons are the strongest, with tight, escalating stories and a clear sense of Tommy’s climb. As his ambitions widen into bigger business and national politics, the series becomes more sprawling and more self-regarding, with plot mechanics that repeat familiar patterns of threat, gamble and bloody resolution. Some supporting characters, especially the women, get less interesting material than the early seasons promised. It remains watchable throughout, but the show’s peak comes before its end.

Who should watch Peaky Blinders?

It suits anyone who enjoys gangster stories, crime drama with a strong visual style, or British period television with a rebellious streak. At six seasons of roughly hour-long episodes, it is a substantial but manageable commitment. Expect frequent brutal violence, drug use, strong language and sexual content; it is firmly adult viewing.

For something in the same vein:

• Line of Duty for another addictive British crime series built on corruption and tense standoffs.
• Happy Valley for northern English crime drama with a rawer, more grounded tone.
• Life on Mars for period British crime storytelling with an anachronistic twist.

The verdict

Peaky Blinders is a crime saga with genuine swagger and a towering lead performance, and its early seasons rank with the best British television of the century. The later years are looser and more repetitive, but Cillian Murphy and the Shelby family make the whole journey worth taking.

Rating: 4.5/5