Advertisement

The worst final season since Game of Thrones? How Peaky Blinders fell apart

Looking for a plot: Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby - Robert Viglasky
Looking for a plot: Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby - Robert Viglasky

After six seasons, dozens of slow-motion montages, and more Nick Cave songs than you could shake a red right hand at, Peaky Blinders reaches the end of the line on Sunday night. But it’s been a creaky farewell for Peaky, with its sixth and final season burning through much of the goodwill accumulated through its years as the BBC’s biggest blockbuster since Top Gear.

Tommy Shelby’s moody saunter into the sunset has suffered from a threadbare plot, toe-curling dialogue and the absence of the great Helen McCrory, who, of course, died in April 2021. Ahead of the feature-length finale which brings down the shutters on the beloved Brummie noir saga, it is worth considering, then, how the Steven Knight's series came to find itself at such a sorry position. Here are five ways Peaky Blinders’s big blow-out turned into a damp squib.

Tired Tommy vs the Fascists

In its bones, Peaky Blinders has always been a Nick Cave montage in search of a reason to exist. This year, the storyline was even more disposable than usual. As played out over endless, increasingly stilted and dreary scenes, Tommy has been cosying up to Oswald Mosley and Hitler-fancying American gangster Jack Nelson in order to learn their plans and inform Winston Churchill.

What secrets, though, is he supposed to uncover? That Mosley’s Hitler-fanciers have right-wing sympathies? They’re not all that fond of Jews? You can accuse fascists of a lot but not of being coy about their beliefs.

Because there is nothing for Tommy to discover, the central plot has lacked tension. Plus, the idea of American mobsters being all in on Hitler feels completely inauthentic. Jewish gangsters in Chicago and New York were, in fact, stalwart anti-fascists. Knight isn’t ripping his story from the history books. He’s colouring in the edges with big squishy crayons.

Just as dreary was the secondary story in which Tommy discovered he had a secret son. Sadly, new character “Duke” has been a wash-out, with no distinguishing characteristics – though it isn't unimaginable Knight will take the Shakespearean route and have Duke kill his dad on Sunday.

Oh, look Nazis! Sam Claflin as Oswald Mosley and Amber Anderson as Diana Mitford - Robert Viglasky
Oh, look Nazis! Sam Claflin as Oswald Mosley and Amber Anderson as Diana Mitford - Robert Viglasky

Regurgitating old cliches

A case can be made that Peaky Blinders fans love the show because it recycles the same two or three flourishes over and over. PJ Harvey/Anna Calvi /Idles blare over the speakers. Tommy mooches in slow motion. The camera hovers behind his head. That kind of thing.

There was lots of that this season, as Tommy walked in on a post-coital Gina Gray after her assignation with Mosley and when he delivered a ticking bomb to the opium dealers in Birmingham. Fans may have felt Knight was tickling them beneath the chin. But among the general audience it was obvious the jig was up and that Knight was recycling old tics and tricks. Come on Peaky Blinders, leave your flat cap at home and do something different for a change.

Wasting Stephen Graham

Graham is one the great character actors of his era. And Cillian Murphy is essentially a Hollywood leading man who happens to prefer Sunday night BBC drama to red carpets and popping flash-bulbs. Put the pair together and it is reasonable to expect sparks.

Yet Peaky Blinders has done it best to keep them apart, with Graham’s salty shop steward Hayden Stagg appearing in a trifling two scenes. And just one of those featured Tommy. And it was over in five minutes. It’s the BBC drama equivalent of King Kong versus Godzilla, except the great ape never meets the loutish lizard.

Missed opportunity: Stephen Graham as the barely-seen Hayden Stagg - Robert Viglasky
Missed opportunity: Stephen Graham as the barely-seen Hayden Stagg - Robert Viglasky

The void left by Helen McCrory

The death of Helen McCrory last year at the age of 52 was of course a tragedy for her family, with other considerations coming a distant second. Goodness, though, Peaky Blinders has had its tweeds in a twist without her. As the anarchic Aunt Polly, McCrory brought irreverence and dark wit. That razor-blade irascibility wasn’t always in Steven Knight’s script – it was largely a McCrory original. And without it, Peaky Blinders is flailing.

Terrible female characters

Following on from the empty space left by Aunt Polly, it’s clear Peaky Blinders does not know what to do with its female protagonists. This season we were introduced to Diana Mitford – mistress to Oswald Mosley and, so we were led believe, a formidable operator in her own right (and also a real person – and the mother of Formula 1 powerbroker Max Mosley).

But all she wanted was to get inside Shelby’s undies. This supposed fascist firebrand was reduced to a simpering love interest whose only personality trait was fancying Tommy.

No Aunt Polly: Anya Taylor-Joy as Gina Gay - Matt Squire
No Aunt Polly: Anya Taylor-Joy as Gina Gay - Matt Squire

Ditto Anya Taylor-Joy’s Gina Gray. She was re-introduced delivering a bizarre femme fatale monologue to husband, Michael (being married you’d think they might be over that). And then, with no foreshadowing, turned up in the bed of Oswald Mosley. That’s all she had going on: another woman defined entirely by the men around her.

That same dynamic was visible in Tommy’s wife, Lizzie. Entirely without agency, she speaks only when spoken to by her husband. She was like one of those characters in a video game who shudder to life when you walk up and press “X” on your joypad – and proceed to deliver variations of the same dialogue over and over.

Knight had a notorious flop with a film set inside a video game: the Matthew McConaughey-Anne Hathaway stinker Serenity. So who knows? Perhaps Peaky Blinders season six has been a secret PlayStation cut-scene all this time.