Peaky Blinders – stories that inspire a brush, scrub and suave up…

  • Peaky Blinders-BBC series-Cillian Murphy-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity-3One of the recent(ish) highlights of British television around these parts was the first series of Peaky Blinders.

    It was good to see a uniquely British take on gangster history and one that was presented in a dramatically visual and cinematic style, with production values that equalled those from the other side of the pond (a lot of current drama from this side of the water doesn’t quite have a lived in look and there is almost a feel of it being children’s television in spirit and appearance somehow – I’m not sure if it’s to do with current film techniques and lighting but Peaky Blinders avoided such things).

    Peaky Blinders-BBC series-Cillian Murphy-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity-2

    The story of 1920s prohibition and misbehaviour in America has been told countless times in film and other form – but extra suave, dashing chaps from Brum on the make? Not such a commonplace story.

    Peaky Blinders-BBC series-Cillian Murphy-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity

    Apart from being a right rollicking set of entertainment and very particular eye candy, it also made you think and consider a set of social conditions, place, people and history that aren’t often considered amongst the well trodden tropes of crime drama; the mental and social upset that occurred post the First World War and how that fed into this (under)world, the abundance of firearms on the streets that had been brought back after the conflict, the sway of left-wing politics and uprisings…

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    …which was added an extra layer by what you were watching onscreen had its roots in fact and the history of an actual family.

    This was rush home and make a date television – something that seems to be a rarity nowadays.

    Peak Blinders at the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation here. The layers and history behind the stories here.

    Peruse the releases of the series here.

     

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