Saying Goodbye to Tommy Shelby, a Traumatized TV Antihero

This text incorporates spoilers for Season 6 of “Peaky Blinders.”

LONDON — “John was a superb boy. Arthur tries. Tommy’s completely different,” Aunt Polly (Helen McCrory) says of the Shelby brothers in Season 4 of “Peaky Blinders.”

All through the trendy BBC gangster drama (which airs on Netflix in the US), Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is in a league of his personal. Though he’s the second-born brother, the bold Tommy rapidly takes his place as head of the household upon returning house to Birmingham, in central England, after preventing in World Struggle I.

The present’s creator, Steven Knight, has said that he sees the present as a western, and Tommy is the outlaw at its heart. Whereas the present has spawned many “Peaky”-inspired haircuts and themed occasions, Tommy, because the story’s defining determine, is the character most followers search to emulate. (In 2020, he was voted the “greatest TV character of all time” by the male-oriented British web site LADbible.)

Though the present has now ended — the ultimate season arrived on Netflix final week — Tommy’s affect is ready to proceed, as Knight has plans for a characteristic movie set throughout World Struggle II.

From the start of “Peaky Blinders,” when the present’s characters have been nonetheless rising from the shadow of World Struggle I, masculinity and violence have been inextricably linked. The gang succeeded by utilizing bodily pressure in addition to crafty, to not point out these razor blades they supposedly sewed into their caps. “The one option to assure peace is to make the prospect of conflict appear hopeless,” Tommy argues in Season 3.

When “Peaky Blinders” premiered in 2013 in Britain, it joined a TV panorama plagued by male antiheroes: “Breaking Bad” and the transformation of Walter White ended the identical month that “Peaky” debuted; “Sons of Anarchy” — with the violent biker Jax Teller at its heart — aired its penultimate season that yr; and viewers have been six seasons into Don Draper’s journey up the company ladder in “Mad Men.”

Tommy matches in effectively amongst these different dangerously and seductively flawed main males. By his character, although, the present has additionally explored the affect of battlefield trauma, prefiguring the extra explicitly psychological health-conscious TV that we see in the present day.

In Britain, “Peaky Blinders” has acquired a gentle stream of criticism for its fashionable depiction of violence, and final yr Nick Fletcher, a member of Parliament, mentioned Tommy, particularly, was a detrimental position mannequin. “Is there any marvel we’re seeing so many younger males committing crime?” Fletcher mentioned. “These packages make crime look cool.”

Watching a present like “Peaky Blinders” isn’t sufficient, by itself, to result in violent habits, in keeping with the psychologist Douglas Gentile, whose work focuses on the affect of mass media. However “the entire time you’re watching a violent present, you’re rehearsing aggressive fantasies,” he mentioned in a current video interview, and the extra you watch, “the extra desensitized you turn out to be to each media and actual world violence.”

Public conversations round male-perpetrated violence have shifted dramatically since “Peaky Blinders” debuted practically a decade in the past. The emergence of the #MeToo movement popularized the idea of “toxic masculinity,” which broadly refers to a mannequin of manhood that encourages males to “suppress emotion and mask distress” and might result in aggression, in keeping with the American Psychological Affiliation.

“Peaky Blinders” has undergone an evolution of its personal, focusing much less on bodily fights and extra on the inner battle inside Tommy, mentioned Anthony Byrne, who directed Seasons 5 and 6.

“Violence may be very overused,” he mentioned in a current telephone interview. “Season 4 was all about gangsterism. I felt just like the present had gotten away from what it ought to proceed to be: the journey of Tommy’s psyche.”

Within the closing season, for instance, Byrne minimize a “traditional Peaky Blinders” struggle scene that includes Tommy, Arthur and a few dockworkers. “It simply didn’t work and it felt flawed,” he mentioned. “Time had moved on. Tommy had moved on.”

From the start, Tommy has struggled with what we now perceive as post-traumatic stress dysfunction, stemming from his time in World Struggle I. In Season 6, he suffers from seizures, together with his physique reflecting the inside turmoil wrought from preventing at house and overseas.

This vulnerability is important motive viewers root for the character, in keeping with Julie Taddeo, a historian who focuses on British tv. “He generally is a very unlikable character,” she mentioned in a current telephone interview, “however he’s relatable as a result of we now have a extra nuanced understanding of conflict and trauma.”

Regardless of the present’s give attention to the Peaky Blinders and their battle, feminine characters like Ada Shelby and Aunt Polly are central to Tommy’s trajectory. “I all the time explored his masculinity via his female self,” Byrne mentioned.

“All the pieces in Tommy’s psyche is ruled by the ladies in his life, each lifeless and alive.” he defined. “His mom, who dedicated suicide by throwing herself right into a canal, is sort of a spectre who may be very a lot the subtext of Tommy.”

We bid farewell to Tommy at a time wherein concepts round masculinity have gotten extra expansive, and public figures in Britain just like the rapper Stormzy and Prince Harry have shared their very own psychological well being struggles.

Consequently, “our expectations and calls for of male characters have undoubtedly expanded and intensified,” Taddeo mentioned. “We now need much more from these males.”

This has been mirrored in reveals like “Derry Ladies,” whose central father, Gerry (Tommy Tiernan), is greater than comfy expressing his feelings because the characters navigate “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland; “After Life,” wherein Ricky Gervais performs a widow whose grief leads him to think about suicide; and “This Is Us,” wherein Randall, the lead character performed by Sterling Ok. Brown, struggles with anxiousness.

All through “Peaky Blinders,” the query of redemption hangs over Tommy. Within the closing season, Tommy says he’s studying kindness from his youngsters, and within the closing scenes of the present, he chooses to not shoot a person who has wronged him. As an alternative, he walks away.

“Tommy rides in on a black horse and out on a white horse, so there’s hope for him,” Byrne mentioned. “The place he goes, no one is aware of, however there will probably be a characteristic movie, so the story will proceed.”