Peaky Blinders has, by contrast, shuddered more or less to a standstill. This week’s instalment started explosively enough, as Tommy tossed into a Birmingham canal the ticking bomb he used to threaten the tea-shop owners supplying Arthur (Paul Anderson) with his opium.
And yet the episode was soon revealed to be a damp squib. People muttered in the dark. There was lots of glowering. Tommy stomped around looking glum. Female characters were glorified window-dressing who existed simply to obsess about Shelby or nudge along his story.
The going remained dreary even as Knight revealed the probable means by which Shelby is to be killed (assuming he has the courage to bump off his anti-hero). The deed will be done by Aunt Polly’s incarcerated son, Michael Gray (Finn Cole), at the behest of fascist gangster Jack Nelson (James Frecheville). Nelson, for good measure, has arranged that Shelby organisation mole Billy Grade (Emmet J Scanlan) is to take care of the addled Arthur.
This ought to be heady stuff: knives are about to the drawn, kin will slay kin. And yet the episode just sort of flopped along. And that’s without touching on the enormous let-down that has been Stephen Graham as dockworkers’ union man Hayden Stagg. We say let-down, but he’s hardly been in it.
He popped up several weeks ago to share mindfulness tips with Arthur. And now, here he was reluctantly facilitating Tommy’s plan to import guns as part of Shelby’s muddled scheme to stitch up Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin). Graham, usually a clenched fist of an actor, was unexpectedly listless. And his character seemed ever so slightly in a stupor. Those watching at home will have known precisely how he felt.
