Peaky Blinders review – 5×01 “Black Tuesday”

The Blinders are back

It’s honestly impressive how, five series on, Peaky Blinder’s still hasn’t lost any of its punch. A lot of crime dramas would have started to sag by now under their own weight, but under Steven Knight’s capable hands the show has started its fifth series very strongly, bursting out of the gate with an episode that, considering it mostly just place sets for the rest of the series, really shouldn’t be as exciting as it is.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues with it. But to be honest, those issues are more to do with the series as a whole than this specific episode, so we’ll explore those later. Opening two years after the last series, the fifth series finds the Shelby’s rich, connected, and very powerful, with Tommy as a Labour MP and a double agent for the establishment, Michael running the family business in America, and Polly having the time of her life in a Monte Carlo casino.  That doesn’t last long however, as the 1929 Stock Market Crash rears it’s ugly head, wiping out a lot of the family’s savings.

Despite his desire to keep the Shelby name out of sporting events, Tommy decides to throw the family back into crime as a way of the keeping everything running while the worlds financial system goes into meltdown.  His first gambit is sending some Blinders to kill a blackmailer in Chinatown on behalf of a Lord, during which Finn takes a bullet to the arm. When extracted, the bullet has some writing on it from a group calling itself the Angels of Retribution, who also seem to have been sending threatening letters to the Shelby company demanding repayments.

Meanwhile, Ada finds herself pregnant through Tommy’s secret service liaison, Linda is back on her Lady McBeth ambitions, and Michael is heading back to England after being responsible for losing the Shelby money, with a new American girlfriend in tow.

Like I said before, this episode mostly serves to dangle threads under people’s noses. We get a brief meeting with Oswald Mosely, the future leader of the British union of Fascists. We know he’s going to play a major role in the series, but for the moment it’s impossible to tell what it might be. The Angels of Retribution remain mostly in the background as a vague threat, and it’s unclear if theirs going to be any consequences to Tommy’s demand to Lord Suckerby.

That means we’re mostly sitting down watching the Shelby’s bicker about what to do. On paper, this should be boring, but the dialogue in these scenes and the dynamics of these clashing characters manages to keep it interesting. Arthur’s awkward attempt to take charge of the board meeting while Tommy is away is one highlight, bringing a rare spot of humour to the Blinder’s world, while also being a great character moment for Arthur.

Arthur has always had a fantastic range, switching from a barely constrained psycho, to a surprisingly sensitive and thoughtful man, to complete clown within the space of an episode. Here he plays the fool, stumbling over his words nervously at the meeting, and the thoughtful man, revealing to Linda that’s he made peace with the idea that he’s not clever enough to lead the Shelby’s and is happy enough to leave Tommy to it. Sadly, this character work is undone by his shrewish wife Linda, probably the worst written female character on the show, who lapses into a 2D Lady Macbeth figure, demanding Arthur show some ambition and usurp Tommy.

Speaking of Tommy, his mental state continues to deteriorate, as he attempts to kill himself after having to shoot his son’s sick horse. When he’s not coldly calculating or fuming that people aren’t listening to him, he spends his time in the woods, hallucinating the spectre of Grace is appearing to him.

Now, this is a problem I have with Tommy. Somehow, he is always right. Even the stock market crash, something which eluded the most talented experts of the day, was correctly anticipated by Tommy from Birmingham, a PTSD-ridden working-class boy. At the end of the episode again, he proves himself to have an unparalleled reach of power, being able to threaten and then order a journalist shot in broad daylight. It’s no surprise to me that the third series of the show, which features Tommy on the backfoot is the best series so far (In my opinion.)

Some other problems with the episode/series is a little bit how predictable some of the plots have become. Likely, the Angels of Retribution is some big Chinese crime syndicate and the Blinders will probably come under attack that is eventually sorted by Tommy pulling a deal with someone out of his arse at the last minute. I’m hopeful I will be surprised, and the Mosley storyline does give me hope that this series will be different, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Overall, despite some grumbles that I’ve always had with the show, this latest edition of Peaky Blinders comes in strong. It’s well paced and exciting, even when nothing is really happening, which just testifies to how good a writer Steven Knight is. I’m hopeful that the show will surprise us over the next few weeks with some new idea’s, but to be honest it could still serve up the same old same old and it would be so well executed that I would still love it.

RATING: 4/5

• I really shouldn’t laugh, but the sight of Charlie, Tommy’s son, petulantly screeching at him lines like “You’re not god!” had me in stitches.
• Tommy Shelby would 100% be a shy tory in the modern day.