Cillian Murphy’s starring role in Peaky Blinders has been given the ultimate seal of approval, after gang leader Tommy Shelby was voted the ‘greatest TV character’ of all time.
Gangster Shelby, played by the Cork actor over five seasons in the multi-award winning BBC period drama, emerged as the best on-screen icon in a massive poll of over 400,000 followers of LADbible.
Birmingham mob boss Shelby beat off competition from a string of other screen favourites, including Breaking Bad’s Walter White, The Sopranos’ Tony Soprano, Arya Stark from The Game of Thrones and Eleven from Stranger Things.
The latest accolade from LADbible comes just weeks after readers of the same UK-based social media publisher named Peaky Blinders as the best TV show of the past decade.
The gritty, Steven-Knight-created drama again edged out smash-hit US rival ‘Breaking Bad’ by just a handful of votes to top the first poll.
Game of Thrones finished third with 27.4 per cent of the vote, followed by Sky and HBO’s 2019 series, Chernobyl.
The latest endorsement of the Birmingham-based show follows confirmation that pre-production of series six of Peaky Blinders is now underway.
The hugely-popular drama has also helped boost tourism in the parts of England - mainly Birmingham and Liverpool - where the show has been shot.
In Liverpool one popular three-hour tour, called ‘Peaky Beatles’, has been devised specifically to cater for fans of both the drama and the Fab Four.
Many new Peaky Blinders-inspired bars, clubs, beers, whiskeys, clothing ranges and even festivals have also been launched in recent years.
