The closing sequence of Peaky Blinders, Stephen Knight’s operatic celebration of Birmingham gangsters, is upon us. As ever, the Shelbys, the fantastically dysfunctional household entrusted with organising town’s crime between the wars, will generate a frenzy of interwoven subplots. In essence, nonetheless, the saga will resolve into an influence battle — not, clearly, between good and evil and even between unhealthy and worse, however between the outdated and the brand new.
On one facet is Peaky’s perennial star flip, Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby. Tommy is crafty, intelligent and ruthless — but in addition superstitious, ravaged by drink, haunted by his useless spouse, outwitted within the earlier sequence by Oswald Mosley and, as /unhealthy Catholic, distractedly chasing the impossibility of absolution.
On the opposite
