VERDICT Vivid new characters, returning old
favourites, and the riveting challenge of proper
American Mafi a types combine to keep this
ever-stylish series feeling as exciting as ever.performance that fi ts right in with
Peaky Blinders’ operatic tone. Luca has
just been released from prison and is part of a
well-established crime family in New York, which
makes the Shelbys seem small-time. But Luca’s
immediate mission is to take vengeance on
Tommy and co for killing one of his clan, a task
he undertakes with a due sense of purpose by
delivering death threats contained in Christmas
cards sent to all the key Shelby family members.
The resulting Godfather-style blood bath, and
death of a much-loved Peaky Blinder, gets the
series off to a tremendously tense and vital start.
From then on the episodes settle down to
a slightly calmer pace, cross-cutting between
a rich array of sub-plots involving the various Shelby
businesses, troublesome Communists riling up their
workers, and Tommy’s new boxing protégé Bonnie
Gold (Jack Rowan), whose father Aberama (Aiden
Gillen) wears a spectacular fedora, rivalled only by
the returning Tom Hardy as Alfi e Solomons, with his
wide-brim old-school Jewish titfer. The fi rst time
these two huge characters meet is a series highlight,
and you can imagine writer Steven Knight rubbing
his hands with glee at the prospect of further
encounters between heavyweights Hardy and Gillen
and their vivid headgear.
Also making a welcome return is aristocratic
horse trainer May Carleton (Charlotte Riley), lastseen in series two when Tommy left her hanging
at the Derby. Now she’s back in his world,
inevitably fl irting but also heavily confl icted as
she tries her best to keep him in the (mostly) legit
horse-racing business, while he’s fi nding new and
inventively dodgy ways of taking advantage of
America’s Prohibition laws. We never know
which way their relationship will turn.
All of this plays out compellingly, but hovering
above everything and everyone is that main threat
of Changretta and his associates, as they attempt
a series of further ambushes on the Shelbys,
aided by a deliciously dark alliance between Luca
and Helen McCrory’s increasingly unhinged
Aunt Polly. Her fury with Tommy lies beneath
her every move, but she also thinks, perhaps
delusionally, that she can protect her wounded
son Michael (Finn Cole) from the Italians.
When it started, Peaky Blinders felt like a
dazzling attempt to prove British TV could be as
cinematic and thrilling as anything on Netfl ix or
HBO, as well as telling a little-known story of
Midlands-based crime folk, and this latest run
reaches electrifying new heights. BOYD HILTONAFTER A THIRD series which wallowed
not unpleasurably in the decadence of the
extended Birmingham-based Shelby family of
criminals and their accomplices, this fourth run
feels much more driven. The main catalyst for that
is new character Luca Changretta, played by
Adrien Brody in the kind of grandiose
He just couldn’t decide
what to take to
Antiques Roadshow.CREATED BY Steven Knight
CAST Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory, Paul
Anderson, Adrien Brody, Sophie Rundle,
Aidan Gillen, Tom HardyPLOT It’s 1925 and Brummie gangster Tommy
Shelby (Murphy) is estranged from his family
having strategically betrayed them. But his new
life is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a
vengeance-seeking American Mafi oso (Brody).BBC FIRST
OUT NOW
EPISODES VIEWED 1-4★★★★
PEAKY BLINDERS:
SERIES 4