Thought I'd check in with a review of Peaky Blinders, two seasons in with a BBC production, available in the United States on Netflix, and telling the story of a gang in Birmingham, England, same name as the show, a few years after World War I.Like most historical dramas, Peaky Blinders on television takes a few liberties with real history, in this case, the main time of the real Peaky Blinders heyday, which was late 19th century and early 20th century. Also, the sewing of razor blades into caps, so the caps when taken off the head could be used as weapons, may well be apocryphal - at very least, as the source of the Peaky Blinders' name.
But the series is so good, who cares about perfect history? From the moment the first scene opens, you're struck by a cinematography that's often breathtaking. And the characters, story lines, and acting fit right into this high and clearly defined frame.
Cillian Murphy is superb as Tommy Shelby, the Peaky Blinders' leader, even though he's younger than his brother Arthur, deeply flawed and also powerfully played by Paul Anderson. A young Winston Churchill is also a character, veteran Sam Neill of Jurassic Park plays the head cop bent on taming the gang. Helen McCrory (Harry Potter) plays Tommy's aunt, who in her own way is at least partially in charge of the Peaky Blinders, and Annabelle Wallis (The Tudors) plays Grace, a major player and love interest of more than one character.
As is the case with many mobster television series, Tommy has his hands full fighting both the law and rival gangs, and enforcing loyalty in his own ranks. But he does this with a patented mix of intelligence and violence, more or less carefully applied, and given this dancing on the edge, and the less than completely blind fidelity to history, you never know what's going to happen - well, you know that Winston Churchill won't be killed, but that's about it.
Peaky Blinders is reminiscent, in some ways, of Boardwalk Empire on the one hand, because they both take place in the 1920s, and The Black Donnellys on the other, which told the story of an Irish gang family in contemporary Hell's Kitchen in New York City. But Peaky Blinders has a story and feel and compelling ethnic and proletariate depictions all its own, and I highly recommend it.
deeper history
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The past two episodes of The Walking Dead (5.6 and 5.7) have been, well, a little slow and lackluster - certainly in comparison to what happened with Eugene and then Beth before that.
Coming in with an all-too-rare review of The Good Wife, which has been just superb this season.
A very different episode of The Affair tonight - 1.7 - with barely a scene in either story of Noah and Alison together. But the episode was one of the best in the series so far, and broke all kinds of new ground.
Alfred Hitchcock said he preferred suspense to surprise in his stories - surprise being a bomb explodes out of nowhere on a bus, suspense being we see the bomb ticking with the passengers talking unaware on the bus. Homeland 4.9 had both bases covered, in one of its all-time best episodes - something I've been saying about a lot of Homeland's episodes of late.
Well, journalism is always at the barricades in The Newsroom, but it was especially and eloquently there in episode 3.3 tonight.
The best scene in the generally excellent season 4 finale of Hell on Wheels tonight was probably Cullen and the buffalo early on in the story. The poor buffalo has come upon the railroad track, bisecting its grazing land, and the buffalo is frozen, unable to make sense out of, and unable to cross and break through, that railroad track to the lush pasture on the other side.
Still, the set up of Cullen working on the railroad, but working for Durant's competition is a good one, and promises lots of tense and deadly scenes next year. You know what? I'm also unhappy that the next season will be the last one for this series. Hell on Wheels has single-handedly brought back to the Western as a powerful television genre in the second decade of the 21st century, and I'd like to see a lot more.