Tv Series Peaky Blinders

 

Peaky Blinders was created and written by Steven Knight. Screen Yorkshire provided funding for the production through the Yorkshire Content Fund, ensuring that the majority of the show was filmed in Yorkshire as part of the deal. Linguists were not hired in the production to assist in the show, leading to the Romani Gypsies in the earlier series frequently speaking broken Romanian (as opposed to Romani).

Series 1

The first series was filmed in Birmingham, Bradford, Dudley, Leeds, Liverpool, and Port Sunlight. Railway sequences were filmed between Keighley and Damems, using carriages from the Ingrow Museum of Rail Travel (owned by Vintage Carriages Trust), and carriages owned by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Trust. Many of the scenes for the show were filmed at the Black Country Living Museum. Steven Knight, Stephen Russell and Toby Finlay all had writing credits on the series.

Ulster-born, New Zealand-raised Sam Neill enlisted the help of Northern Irish actors James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson to help him recover his lost Northern Irish accent for the role of C.I. Campbell. In the end, he had to tone down the accent since the series was marketed in the United States.

Series 2

A second series was commissioned shortly after the broadcast of the first and aired in October and November 2014. On 11 January 2014, auditions were held in Digbeth area of Birmingham (near where parts of the series are set) for white and mixed race teenage male extras, resulting in lengthy queues.

Series 3

Shortly after the final episode of the second series, the show announced via its Twitter account that it had been renewed for a third series. On 5 October 2015, the official Peaky Blinders Twitter account announced that filming had begun for series 3. Filming completed on 22 January 2016, after 78 days of shooting.

Series 4

During the initial broadcast of series 3, the BBC renewed Peaky Blinders for series 4 and 5, each of which comprises six episodes. Filming for series 4 started in March 2017 and premiered on 15 November 2017 on BBC Two. Both The Weinstein Company and its logo in its credits weren't included, even though the company was formerly involved in the US distribution of the series.

Series 5

The BBC commissioned a fifth series in mid-2016. On 22 August 2018, it was confirmed that series 5 would be broadcast on BBC One.

Having already premiered to a select audience at Birmingham Town Hall on 18 July 2019, the series began airing on BBC One on 25 August 2019.

Series 6

On 5 May 2018, Steven Knight told Birmingham Press Club that "we are definitely doing [series] six". Production on the series was due to begin in March 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During 2020, rumours emerged linking comedian Rowan Atkinson to the show for the role of Adolf Hitler in series 6, but the producers denied the involvement saying that the news is "completely false".

On 18 January 2021, it was announced that series six, which had just begun filming, would be the final television series of Peaky Blinders; though Knight revealed "the story will continue in another form". Helen McCrory, who played the character of Polly Gray, died in April 2021, thus unable to film any scenes for the series. Series six premiered on 27 February 2022.

Future

Following the announcement that the sixth series would be the last, Knight clarified that, following the year-long production hiatus in 2020, it had been decided to produce a feature-length movie in place of a seventh television series, with other connected television series potentially following. There is still no production date, but creator Steven Knight has revealed that the movie should be in cinemas in 2024.

Peaky Blinders won the Returning Drama award at the 2022 National Television Awards ceremony, with Knight subsequently confirming during his acceptance speech that production of the film would begin in spring 2023.

Throughout its run, Peaky Blinders received widespread critical acclaim. David Renshaw of The Guardian summarised the series as a "riveting, fast-paced tale of post-first world war Birmingham gangsters", praising Murphy as the "ever-so-cool Tommy Shelby" and the rest of the cast for their "powerful performances". Sarah Compton of The Telegraph gave the series a 4/5 rating, praising the show for its originality and "taking all of our expectations and confounding them". Alex Fletcher from Digital Spy believes that "Peaky Blinders has started as sharp as a dart", while Den of Geek called the series "the most intelligent, stylish and engrossing BBC drama in ages". Cult TV Times critic Hugh David said the show "warrants the billing" by "managing to tick several ratings boxes – period drama, gangster epic, film star leads – yet go against the grain of those in the most interesting of ways".

The show has been particularly celebrated for its stylish cinematography and charismatic performances, as well as for casting an eye over a part of England and English history rarely explored on television. Historians have been divided over whether bringing characters and events from other decades into a 1920s story undermines claims to historical accuracy, or whether working-class life in the period is nevertheless depicted in a truthful and resonant way. Reviews of the second series remained positive, with Ellen E. Jones of The Independent commenting that "Peaky Blinders can now boast several more big-name actors to supplement the sterling work of Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory and Sam Neill", referring to second series additions Tom Hardy and Noah Taylor.

Several critics have compared the show favourably to the American series Boardwalk Empire, which shares the same themes and historical context. Show writer Steven Knight stated in an early interview: "Do you know – and I'm not just saying this – but I've never watched them. I've never seen The Wire, I've never seen Boardwalk Empire, I've never seen any of them." When asked if he deliberately avoided watching those shows, he responded: "It's sort of deliberate in that I don't really want to be looking at other people's work because it does affect what you do inevitably." On 2 March 2016, Knight told the Crime Scene Quarterly "I've had unsolicited communication from Michael Mann, the film director, from Dennis Lehane, Snoop Dogg – he's such a fan. And the late David Bowie was a huge fan – more of that to come" (strongly hinting Bowie's involvement on series three). It was later confirmed that Bowie's music would be featured, and Leonard Cohen had also written a new song for series three.

The sixth and final series received universal acclaim. On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on seven reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 93% approval rating based on 14 reviews, with an average critic rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Peaky Blinders' sixth series gracefully addresses the untimely passing of star Helen McCrory while setting the stage for a fitting climax to this epic saga of likable scalawags."

Depiction of Jessie Eden

Series four and five introduced the character Jessie Eden, based on the real-life British communist and trade union leader. Although the reception was mixed, some people who had known Jessie Eden personally took offence to the way she was depicted. Graham Stevenson, a trade union leader and writer on British communism, a personal friend of Jessie Eden and the writer of her biography, was a harsh critic of the show, stating:

I knew Eden, and as a callow 22-year-old, I didn't ask the 70-year-old Jessie about her relationships, let alone sex life. But I doubt her private life was as complicated or dramatic as her eponymous character's. Nor can I see any young woman during the 1920s gratuitously going into a gents' toilets, as Eden is shown doing, for any reason at all other than life or death. The social values of the programme are ahistorical. It is surely the conceit that Tommy Shelby, the gangster villain-hero of the series, could ever convince a woman like Eden to be wined and dined, let alone be seduced, that finally reveals the true motives of the creators of the programme.

Stevenson also criticised the show for its clothing choices, incorrectly showing Churchill as Home Secretary in 1919, incorrectly depicting Eden as a mass leader during the 1926 General Strike; eventually these inaccuracies led Stevenson to stop watching the show. He went on to elaborate: "Although the TV series' cinematography, music and fast-paced action is obviously attractive, especially matched to outstanding charismatic performances, it's disappointing that an expert in Tudor history was the historical adviser to the series, rather than someone with a background in trade unionism or communism."

At a round table event featuring Stevenson, the poet Dave Puller, and cultural historian Paul Long, the three discussed the series and its depictions of the British working class. Long rated the series positively and praised the series as a great representation of interesting working-class protagonists. Puller had mixed feelings and was disappointed that the show chose to focus on Jessie Eden's fictional romance with Tommy, rather than her real achievements as a communist and a trade union leader.

On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Netflix had acquired exclusive US distribution rights from the Weinstein Company and Endemol. The entirety of series 1 became available for streaming on 30 September 2014; series 2 launched in November 2014. Series 3 was made available 31 May 2016. Due to licensing restrictions, however, most of the show's original soundtrack is not available on the Netflix-distributed version of the series. In 2018, it was announced Peaky Blinders would be moved from its original broadcast channel, BBC Two, to BBC One for its fifth and sixth series.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Peaky Blinders has had a detectable cultural impact in the UK. In 2018, the name Arthur surged into the top 10 boys names for the first time since the 1920s, and Ada jumped into the girls' top 100 for the first time in a century as well. The assumption reached by the ONS is that the popularity of these names was inspired by the characters Arthur Shelby Jr. and Ada Thorne.

In August 2020, a video game based on the television series, titled Peaky Blinders: Mastermind, was developed by FuturLab and released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and for PC via Steam. A virtual reality game, Peaky Blinders: The King's Ransom, was developed by Maze Theory and released for Meta Quest 2 and PICO 4 on March 9, 2023.