Peaky Blinders - Seasons 1-4

“While it’s cool to see Peaky Blinders center Romani characters, they are all played by white actors.”

Title: Peaky Blinders
Episodes Reviewed: Seasons 1-4
Creator: Steven Knight 👨🏼🇬🇧
Writer: Steven Knight 👨🏼🇬🇧 (30 eps)
Directors: Colm McCarthy 👨🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (6 eps), Tim Mielants 👨🏼🇧🇪 (6 eps), David Caffrey 👨🏼🇮🇪 (6 eps), Anthony Byrne 👨🏼🇮🇪 (6 eps), Otto Bathurst 👨🏼🇬🇧 (3 eps), and Tom Harper 👨🏼🇬🇧 (3 eps)

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4.5/5

When the British hit Peaky Blinders landed Stateside via Netflix in 2014, I welcomed it with open arms. The pulpy gangster drama mixed high production values with the bingeability of its new platform, and I tucked into the reinvention of the Peaky Blinders—a real Birmingham-based gang that enjoyed its heyday at the turn of the 20th century—as heartily as the show’s leading man tucks into his whiskey and crime.

Ever seen through a haze of cigarette smoke, Cillian Murphy’s rendition of fictional gang leader Thomas Shelby commands the screen with steely gazes and an impenetrable mind. The series lives and dies by Murphy’s singular magnetism, but that hardly means the rest of the team has skived off. Peaky Blinders has it all: redolent cinematography as nostalgic as a clouded mirror; intrigue that feels straightforward but never boring; and enough style and swagger to survive the world’s short-lived obsession with the Jazz Age that characterized the late aughts and early 2010s. Whereas HBO’s similarly-themed Boardwalk Empire ended its admirable five season run in 2014 and slid silently into the night, Peaky Blinders added an English spin and gave the two-fingered salute to anyone who dare call history a “passing trend”.

Season 5, which arrived on Netflix earlier this fall after a two-year break, prompted me to rewatch the series thus far. Beyond some subplots that would have strongly benefited from post-#MeToo perspective, and a full-throated embrace of firearms that feels particularly dissonant in America—which saw more mass shootings than days in 2019—the world-building, grit, and lurid violence still holds up well to the test of time.

Gender: 3.25/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? Rarely

The poor handling of women in Peaky Blinders serves as the show’s most overt weakness. Frustratingly, it didn’t have to be this way, thanks to supporting women who occupy vast potential for depth and backstory.

Right off the bat, Season 1’s Grace Burgess (Annabelle Wallis), an undercover spy, forges the path of a fully formed character despite some familiar territory: Her loyalties quickly splinter and she falls headlong into the trope of being a trophy to be won for the story’s male leads. But unlike other key characters like Thomas’ aunt Polly (Helen McCrory) or younger sister Ada (Sophie Rundle), Grace feels autonomous. Unfortunately, she disappears in Season 2, having escaped to America…and I wish showrunner Stephen Knight had simply left it at that. But Season 3 resurrects the poor woman and inexplicably lobotomizes her, reducing Grace to a Stepford babymaker and smiling housewife. She’s quickly murdered in order to launch Thomas’ emotional narrative for the season.

Meanwhile, Polly and Ada sound good on paper and the show likes to present them as bad bitches, as they enjoy the occasional slow-mo strutting scene akin to the ones the Peaky Blinder men enjoy on the reg. But the writing often undermines them.

The script tells us that Polly kept the gambling business alive while the Shelby men were drafted to fight the war in France, but nothing shows us that she carries any decision-making weight now that Thomas is back. He assumes position as the head of the family and Polly’s myriad attempts to exert power get routinely ignored. Her storyline degrades throughout Seasons 2 and 3, to the point where she feels more like an arrogant fool than the clever woman she’s apparently supposed to be. Thankfully, her narrative arc pulls up hard, like a Wronski feint in the show’s fourth season. It takes about 30 hours to get there, but she finally receives a moment of triumph and the payoff feels great.

Meanwhile, Ada’s character feels enjoyably stable throughout the series. She’s the youngest sibling who falls in love with a Communist, and although she gets up the duff and must be hidden away for her own protection, she retains a sense of rebellion through the way she sticks up for impoverished people or grapples with the Shelby identity. Sure, her role falls squarely into gender norms as the baby-toting moral compass of the show, but Rundle gives the character plenty of zippiness.

Unfortunately, the rest of the women who float in and out present a carousel of soulless tropes. At its most benign, the rich and bored housewife May Carleton (Charlotte Riley) falls in love with Thomas during a storyline that paints her as a bit pathetic. Similar to Polly, though, May gets some late stage redemption in Season 4 which is nice to see. Others, like sad sack Lizzie (Natasha O'Keeffe), deserve so much more than the abuse doled out to her by the writing, or even by Thomas himself. As cringeworthy as Season 2 becomes, when the writing puts her in the position to be raped for the sole purpose of building Thomas’ own angsty arc (I’m sensing a theme), Season 3 somehow gets even worse as Lizzie grouses about how Thomas “bends her over the desk” whenever he needs to get his rocks off. Yet she remains doggedly in love with him, and the jealous shade-throwing that takes place between her and union organizer Jessie Eden (Charlie Murphy) in Season 4 couldn’t be any less imaginative.

Then you have sheer nutcases like Season 3’s nymphomaniac and Russian caricature Princess Tatiana (Gaite Jansen)—often topless, always panting for it. Or Arthur’s wife Linda (Kate Phillips) who arrives suddenly and without explanation in Season 3, largely characterized as a God-fearing ice queen. She finally starts to show layers in Season 4, but it’s incremental at best.

All in all, women do exist in this universe. Their renderings range from well-intended but inconsistent to flat-out offensive. But the fact that they’re even here is sadly more than we can say for the gangster genre overall, making Peaky Blinders a tiny step above the rest, solely because it bothers to write women into key roles at all.

Race: 3.5/5

By virtue of its chosen story, the show fuels nostalgia for a time when Birmingham was white—nostalgia that feels a bit pointed, considering the city’s current status as one of the UK’s most ethnically diverse cities, rivaling even London by that metric.

Peaky Blinders does include scant Black characters in minor roles, but their appearances across all four seasons barely combine for more than a handful of lines. However, if you scratch beneath the (very white) surface, you’ll find that Peaky Blinders actually features the marginalized communities of the Romani and Irish Travellers—or in the dicey lingo of the show, “gypsies.”

The Shelby family have Romani blood on their mother’s side. In addition, Aunt Polly mentions in Season 4 that skinning rabbits next to a fire reminds her of being 16 years old all over again, alluding to her having full Romani heritage, or at least a more traditional upbringing.

Aunt Polly and Aberama Gold chilling in the woods (Season 4, Episode 5)

These cultural touchpoints surface sporadically, gaining steam over time as Knight slowly imbues his characters with deeper roots. By Season 4, the writing has come a long way since Season 1’s scenes of Thomas conversing with the Romani Lee family in poorly translated Romanian. (To be clear: The Romani originate from Northern India and speak a language similar to Punjabi. Romania is a totally different country, awks.)

While the incorporation of Romani characters is welcome, and fairly in-depth as Peaky Blinders demonstrates the differences between the city-dwelling Shelbys and the itinerant Lees and Golds, who live in caravans, it’s prudent to note that all the main characters are played by ethnically Irish and British actors. Consequently, the issue of whitewashing comes into play, as laid out by Jackson Adler for Bitch Flicks. Romani or Traveller actors should have been more rigorously scouted, or at least hired as consultants. Presumably, they would have flagged to Knight and team that Romani is NOT Romanian, at the very least. The closest we come is the Irish Traveller character of Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee), whose actor has relatives in the Travelling community.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m very glad to see Romani and Travellers centered in an exciting and mainstream show. But I’m also getting tired of making excuses for films and TV shows that don’t bother to hire talent from the actual stakeholders of their own onscreen depictions.

LGBTQ: 1.5/5

No gender or sexual diversity exists among characters with speaking lines.

Same-sex liaisons do occur in the background of party scenes. On the one hand, it’s positive to challenge the false notion that all sexual relationships are straight. And it actually feels positive from a gender perspective to see both men and women being “serviced” by men or women, defusing the gross power dynamics that come from seeing a room full of powerful men being attended to strictly by women.

Unfortunately, the two scenes that do include same-sex relationships, taking place in Seasons 2 and 3, feel hypersexualized. They both occur in London, where orgies, rampant drug use, frantic jazz music, and Black party-goers combine into a problematic and hedonistic “urbanity” meant to contrast with Small Heath, Birmingham, where the Shelby business resides.

At a club owned by the Sabini gang, viewers glimpse the show’s first instance of seeing two men make out against a wall. Thomas stoically walks by, but his brothers John (Joe Cole) and Arthur (Paul Anderson) stare while Arthur spits, “It’s a fucking freak show.”

John and Arthur Shelby looking mighty interested as they walk into Sabini’s club (Season 2, Episode 1)

Obviously, the derogatory line reflects Arthur’s character and the morals of the era, not Knight’s own opinions (one hopes). But the fact remains that Peaky Blinders perpetuates the patently wrong assumption that queer culture—and Black urbanites, apparently—somehow equate to moral decay.

Bonus for Disability: +0.00

Various examples of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occur throughout the seasons, as young men suffer from the aftereffects of having served in the Great War. However, the writers never explore mental health with any depth. Trauma instead gets glorified as an excuse for violence and psychosis.

For example, veteran Danny (Samuel Edward-Cook) suffers from PTSD and theatrically blacks out and reverts back to wartime behavior, during which he needs to be physically restrained.

Danny being hauled to the ground during a bout of psychosis (Season 1, Episode 1)

While his character feels deeply sympathetic, his plight is used, more than anything, as a way to show Thomas’ softer side as the gang leader protects the young lad from persecution for his actions. The elder Shelby, Arthur, also struggles with aggression and even murders an innocent man as part of his story arc.

Putting a human face to trauma may seem well and good, but Knight may not aware of the existing stigma surrounding people with mental illnesses who are often thought to be dangerous liabilities—a reputation reinforced by films like Joker (2019) or another British drama, Bodyguard. But in reality, this group is over ten times more likely to be a victim of violence than the general population.

Luckily, not all representations of mental disability in Peaky Blinders fall into this trap. Curly, a member of the Peaky Blinders who helps Thomas with odd jobs and takes care of his horses, appears to be neurologically atypical—although he is played by non-disabled actor Ian Peck. But the way the street gang embraces him as one of their own serves as a realistic (and inclusive) example of how people in real life regularly absorb individuals from across the neurological spectrum into their everyday lives, without it being a big deal.

At the end of the day, however, the refusal to reward positive mental health strategies keeps this show from handling the topic well. Knight hand-waves the destructive coping mechanisms of all these veterans as a sign of the times. And when Arthur actually attempts a more sustainable route, by embracing religion and pursuing a more peaceful future with his wife and child, his younger brother John denigrates his choices. In updating his sister on how Arthur has been doing, John gripes, “For Christmas get him a sewing kit, so he can sew his fucking balls back on.”

How are audiences supposed to internalize healthy choices when the show’s central and most humanized characters consistently rely on violence to cope, and look awesome doing it?

Mediaversity Grade: C 3.19/5

Within the genre of gangster dramas, Peaky Blinders impresses through its centering of Romani characters and important female characters. But missteps abound. Knight’s team Googled the wrong bloody language for Romani characters to speak across multiple seasons and tropes litter the show like land mines for women, Black characters, LGBTQ, and people suffering from trauma. So many marginalized characters are played by majority actors: Romani whose roots stem from North India, portrayed by white people; Jewish gang leader Alfie Solomons (Tom Hardy) played by a non-Jew; the atypical character of Curly played by someone neurotypical.

But if you’re able to overlook its problems, the nourishing cinematography, comic-book levels of stylish violence, beautiful people, and nostalgic costumes and period setting of Peaky Blinders will still satisfy.

Like Peaky Blinders? Try these other titles featuring campy violence.

Grade: CLiDecember 15, 2019