Peaky Blinders

With the BBC-produced gangster drama releasing its final season on American screens this weekend, it's time to pay tribute to a stylish, over-the-top, ...

This is indicative of a culture Peaky helped build, though—one in which many viewers want to be a Peaky Blinder, right down to the cap and the uncomfortable waistcoat. This sort of voyage makes sense in the world that Peaky Blinders has built: an underworld where logic and realism take a backseat to familial bonds and a skewed sense of loyalty. Hardy’s character, Solomons, is a good encapsulation of the vaguely ludicrous journey the main characters are on: At different points in the series he has Tommy’s brother sent to prison, betrays Tommy multiple times, gets shot on a beach by Tommy and is left for dead, and survives with not a ton of explanation—and somehow the two are still close by the time the final season rolls around. The show is far too good to be reduced to a few YouTube clips of Tommy speeches and Alfie screaming sessions (though the YouTubers have tried). I am sorry to say that while researching this piece, I saw that one of the most viewed pieces of Peaky-related content was by a channel called Charisma on Command that instructs viewers on the Tommy traits that will be valuable if they apply them to their own lives (calmness in all situations!). The reality, of course, is that Tommy is a tortured World War I vet who constantly suffers from flashbacks and once had a meltdown on a golf course. Tommy is tortured throughout the show by PTSD from his days as a tunneler in World War I, and over the course of the series he morphs into a sort of Tony Soprano mixed with Liam Neeson from Taken: a brooding, introspective gangster who battles with himself most of all but never loses a fight to his enemies. Throughout the series, the acting has kept the show on the right side of a very thin line. A Ringer staffer, who’d never seen the show, asked the group, “Wait, is this a comedy?” The more you think about it, the more the question makes sense if you just hear a simple summary of the series. It is a study in change, but also in power—and how to wield it over time. At one point in Season 6 he sits at a dinner table trying to determine the political future of the entire world. The bond between the members is what supercharges the show, like a darkest timeline version of Entourage. This presents itself in many forms. It is reductive to say the show is about haircuts, because it is also about nice, long coats. As she started snapping the photos—I had to take a few to get the hair right, obviously—a car slowed on the street nearby.