After nine years, the final series of Peaky Blinders is here, said Ed Cumming in The Independent. A film spin-off is in the pipeline, but as far as the small screen is concerned, this is the finale; the end of one of the most distinctive dramas in recent British TV history.
A hit all over the world, Peaky Blinders has been such a phenomenon that it’s easy to forget what an “unpromising prospect” it seemed at first: 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” – all set to a modern rock soundtrack.
Although it is not filmed in Birmingham, Peaky Blinders has transformed the city’s image, and put the entire region on the global tourist map; but to me it has been most valuable as a “sartorial reproof to our disgusting era”, said Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian.
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What a joy it’s been to see “Beau Brummies strut their heteronormative, masculinist stuff” season after season. The show’s creator and writer Steven Knight has given Brum swagger. I doff my cap to him.
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