You have to hand it to this wily upstart: four years on from first transmission, with a raft of starry names on the credits and a horde of new international fans (thank you, Netflix), Steven Knight’s Brum-set gangster thriller has made it to the top of the TV pile. The sniffy gatekeepers of “prestige drama” have been forced to stand aside and let Peaky Blinders (BBC Two) swagger on in. They have been scandalising us with their anachronistic taste in indie rock, wildly roaming accents and tendency to break into gratuitous slo-mo ever since.
And so, it may be mid-November in 2017, but in 1925 (adopts Noddy Holder voice) … it’s Christmas! The perfect excuse for some Slade on the soundtrack? They’re bold, but not that bold. Instead, a cliffhanger-resolving prelude reveals that treacherous Tommy (Cillian Murphy) did save his family from the hangman’s noose, but took his sweet time about it. As a result, he is spending the festive season unloved and, apparently, unbothered. He has got whores aplenty at the club, the loyal services of secretary/consigliere Lizzie and a country pile so fancy that the kitchen has its own en-suite, blood-soaked abattoir. These are the little details that really make a house a home.
As for a genuinely fulfilling human connection, there’s hope for Tommy here, too. Who is this strutting (slo-mo, naturally) across the factory floor? Why, it’s feisty union firebrand Jessie Eden (Happy Valley’s Charlie Murphy). She’ll certainly do as a verbal sparring partner, but might she also awaken Tommy the Trot’s long-dormant class consciousness? Here’s hoping.
Meanwhile, Ada’s back from America, Arthur’s let his hair grow long and – worse, still – let his wife gain the upper hand. John and Esme are also quarrelling, but in a sexy way; it’s nothing that the aphrodisiac qualities of live firearms can’t resolve. Admittedly, Aunt Pol’s whisky-soaked seances seem to be getting out of hand, but then who is coked-up Michael to judge? So, all in all, everyone’s getting on just fine, and yet reunite they must. If not for their own benefit, then for the sake of the series, which after last season, is in dire need of a narrative reset.
It would take a truly terrifying menace to compel these characters to make such a move, a man who makes his own trilby look every bit as lethal as the Shelbys’ razor-peaked caps. That man is Luca Changretta, played with relish by Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, though personally I’m slightly more hyped about this series’ other big-name signing, Aiden Gillen. Whatever accent Mayor Carcetti, AKA Little Finger, AKA Gillen has come up with for gypsy king Aberama Gold, you just know it’s going to be bonkers.
Kudos to Luca for getting all his Christmas cards handwritten, and posted in time for the New York airmail deadline. Each member of the Shelby family got one, which doesn’t sound so sinister until you realise that those child’s handprints are not a Kirstie Allsopp-inspired crafting trend, but a symbolic mafia death threat. And so it’s bye-bye to the good life and hello again, to living on top of each other in a soot-begrimed Small Heath terrace. As Tommy says: “We need to be together in a place even they won’t dare to come.”
Peaky Blinders often looks to the history books for inspiration, but they should check out Chester zoo, too. The Secret Life of the Zoo (Channel 4) doesn’t have the grand sweep of Blue Planet II, but it certainly has some characters, including Ripley, the femme fatale jewel wasp. She renders Carl the cockroach zombie-like with her sting, before encouraging her larvae to burrow under his shell, from where they commence devouring their host from the inside out. How’s that for an antihero matriarch?
More conventional in her maternal approach was Kitani the uncomfortably overdue black rhino. In fact, were it not for a few minor DNA variations, she could be just another fed up mum-to-be on One Born Every Minute. Are we guilty of anthropomorphising these animals? You bet we are, and the professional zookeepers are the worst. Take Dave, who hovers over the Madagascar-native tenrecs (clangers, basically) offering his commentary on their mating attempts: “That’s him going: ‘Oh, you know, want a bit?’ And she’s going: ‘No, actually, I don’t.’”
What does a small furry mammal have to do to get a bit of privacy around here? You can’t help but think these species would be far less endangered if they only had some alone time. Instead, between the hidden cameras and the omnipresent keepers, you would have more magic moments in a 1920s Small Heath tenement.
