Another Freakfest come and gone. State Street is paved with dried vomit and empty cans of PBR, evidence of this weekend’s drunken revelries. It’s gray and cold outside, most of your midterms are over and you’ve got a hangover that could bring a hardened gladiator to his knees. In short, there’s no better time for burying yourself in quilts and accepting the warm embrace of Netflix, specifically British crime drama “Peaky Blinders.”
Adding to the already overwhelming assortment of quality programming available for streaming, “Peaky Blinders” appeared on Netflix Instant this month, featuring notable actors Cillian Murphy (“Transcendence”) and Helen McCrory (“Skyfall”). The show focuses around the Shelby family, a cute little mom-and-pop crime ring operating in Birmingham, England, in 1919. Birmingham is a dirty city during this era, and the show does a brilliant job of portraying the industrial grunge of the time. Panning shots of Birmingham’s towering smokestacks, street shots with hot blasts of flame and sparks from forges and a lingering soot layer on all set pieces immerses the audience in the atmosphere of the setting. The Shelby family heads a Birmingham street gang called the Peaky Blinders, proprietors of an illegal gambling ring frequented by Birmingham’s working class. An overarching plot is continued across the show’s six episodes follows the cat-and-mouse game created as British authorities try to dismantle and apprehend the Peaky Blinders, who are in turn seeking to expand their influence across Birmingham.
It’s clear that creator and writer Steven Knight did his research to make the show period-accurate down to small details. Frequent references to the horrors of the recent Great War are made, and the lingering impacts on the war’s damaged veterans play into the considerable character depths observed throughout. The largely anti-Bolshevik sentiment also plays a role in the show, serving as a vehicle for an interesting subplot. Admittedly, the show suffers at some points from slow pacing — major plot events are often built up for longer than necessary. Yet this hardly seems like an issue. The quality of acting, excellent historical immersion and variety of British Isles accents had me too interested to really be bothered by this fault.
“Peaky Blinders” has proven itself to be a proper crime drama. A satisfyingly complex web of subplots display gritty British gang violence, romance and family drama in postwar England. Available on Netflix now, it’s a recommended binge watch. The six episodes of the first season are an hour long apiece, so you could plausibly get through the whole thing in a day with the right amount of self-loathing.
STAR RATING: 4.3 / 5
EXCESSIVE DRINKING: yes
TIMES WHEN YOU CAN NOTICE CILLIAN MURPHY’S TEETH ARE CROOKED: 4
GYPSIES: yes
ARE THERE BOOBS: yes (Episode 5, 47:57 / Episode 6, 7:04, 9:06)
