You can't go wrong with a good flat cap. From When the Boat Comes In to The Village, the crucial role played by the humble headgear in the evolution of the inter-war period drama has always been criminally undervalued.If you want to get a head, get a good flat cap, and no series gives better flat cap than Peaky Blinders, returning to BBC2 tonight for a second run of six dark, mean, moody, blood-soaked episodes.But it's doubtful any character in a period drama ever used the flat cap in the same lethal way as the series' anti-hero, gang leader Tommy Shelby, magnetically played by Cillian Murphy, and his gang of enforcers. If you're a fan of Peaky Blinders you'll know it's inspired by the exploits of a real Birmingham gang, whose name was said to derive from their habit of stitching razor blades into the peaks of their caps.
The provenance of the name is disputed by many historians of the period, who point out that a flat cap, razor blade or no razor blade, isn't exactly the most efficient of weapons; the real Peaky Blinders, like their fictionalised TV counterparts, also used guns, knives and coshes.It works brilliantly as a prop, however, especially in a blistering, visceral scene in tonight's episode when the Blinders engage in a massive brawl with rival hoods in a decadent London club. It's an encounter not for the squeamish.
Then again, Peaky Blinders is not supposed to be history; it's entertainment. Nobody disputes the brilliance of the first two Godfather movies, for example, despite them being largely responsible for popularising the myths that the Mafia only ever murders its own kind and is honour-bound by a code of omerta (silence).
The new series picks up two years after the end of the first one. The Twenties are now very much Roaring and Tommy, the family business booming, is nursing ambitions to expand his empire, legal and illegal, beyond Birmingham and into London by hooking up with the city's Jewish gang.Not everyone is convinced, not least the formidable Aunt Polly (Helen McCrory), who doesn't see the point in gambling what the Shelbys have already built up on a dangerous incursion into the gang-infested capital, which has already been carved up between various factions.Besides, there are more pressing matters on home turf, including what Tommy calls "the Irish problem". The IRA are on the Shelbys' backs, leading to a tense, tautly-written encounter where Tommy mocks a female IRA commander about Ireland's internecine "war about peace".
Also, an enemy from Tommy's past has reappeared in the city. I won't spoil things by saying who it is, although fans will probably have guessed already.America got its first taste of Peaky Blinders this week when the entire first series went up on Netflix (the new one follows next month). Disappointingly, the reaction has been muted. Many reviewers, lamenting a case of style over substance, compared it to Boardwalk Empire and found it wanting. It's the wrong comparison.Where Boardwalk Empire has both feet in reality, Peaky Blinders, with its stylised direction, choreographed (though very brutal) violence, liberal use of slo-mo and regular bursts of Nice Cave on the soundtrack, is more like the early scenes of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Both seem to come from a dark, throbbing netherworld of the imagination. Who would want it to be realistic?
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