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.
