Confession time: I’ve never watched ‘Peaky Blinders’. Like, not one second of it. I keep meaning to, I promise, but life just gets in the way… I admit, it’s not ideal for someone who writes for Secret Birmingham to say that. And, with the cinema release of ‘The Immortal Man’ tomorrow (Friday, March 6), it’s only getting more awkward that I have no idea what’s going on.
Luckily, like the legend he is, Steven Knight has my (and maybe your) back. So that I’m not stepping into the cinema or turning on Netflix (‘The Immortal Man’ comes to streaming on Friday, March 20) completely in the dark. In a recent YouTube video, the ‘Peaky Blinders’ creator has named the three essential episodes to watch before the film comes out.
And yeah, it is meant to be “rewatch”, but I haven’t got time for 36 hours+ of TV in me before tomorrow evening. I’ve got more ‘Peaky Blinders’ articles to write. So that I can continue my streak as a Barry Keoghan completionist, and see my faves, Cillian Murphy and Rebecca Ferguson, on the big screen, let’s cut the preamble down to just 3 hours.
Series 1, Episode 1
Start at the start. That makes sense. It introduces Tommy and the Shelby family, as well as Sam Neil’s antagonistic Inspector Chester Campbell, and sets the setting of post-WW1 Birmingham. Steven Knight says it “really lays out what this whole series is about. It introduces Tommy Shelby in a way that I think makes it pretty unequivocal about who this person is.”
“So we see him riding on a horse in an industrial landscape, no words, just his look. The way he is. That attitude. It really says so much about what Peaky is going to be about, and the whole episode is essential to know exactly what this family is and what they do and why they are so fearsome.”
Series 2, Episode 6
Jumping ahead, I have no idea how we got here, but it features Steven Knight’s “favourite sequence of the series.” Tommy is trying to tidy up all his affairs when he is kidnapped by three members of the Ulster Volunteers (working for Campbell) and taken out to a field to be shot.
“They’ve already dug his grave. He asks for time to smoke a cigarette, and in that moment, he reviews his life. His regrets. The things he wishes he had done. And I think as an audience we think this is it, and then there is a twist…” I won’t spoil it here, but it involves Winston Churchill of all people!
Series 6, Episode 6
Halfway through ‘Peaky Blinders’, they start naming episodes for no apparent reason. But ‘Lock and Key’ is the final TV episode of ‘Peaky Blinders’ (so far) and the final appearance of Tommy ahead of ‘The Immortal Man’, and yeah, when you skip 24 episodes, a lot can happen in between, apparently.
“It ties up a lot of things. It resolves a lot of things. It’s full of surprises, I hope. But at the end, it is a resolution of a sort. In that Tommy is confronted with someone who has attempted to kill him and deceive him, and he has a gun in his hand, and he can shoot that person. But he decides not to.”
In it, the Peaky Blinders are trying to get revenge on the IRA for killing Aunt Polly, and Tommy discovers he didn’t really have a brain tumour (tricked by a doctor working with fascist Oswald Mosley). Oh, and we also see Tommy’s illegitimate son, Duke (replaced by Barry Keoghan in the movie). In the end, Tommy “goes back to his horse, and he rides away into the sunset.”
“Now, the horse he rides away on is a white horse. The horse he arrived on at the beginning of the series was a black horse. So I think there is the contrast between the two moments. And maybe we may believe that Tommy is cured, that he’s better, that he’s riding a way to have a simpler life.”
Okay, so no number of episodes short of the whole six series of ‘Peaky Blinders’ are ever going to set you up perfectly for ‘The Immortal Man’, which is full of “revelations”, but these three should give you a taste of “who Tommy Shelby is” before you watch.
