Fans have officially been reunited with the Peaky Blinders gang.
The BBC period crime drama — which was released in the United States by Netflix — ran for six seasons from 2013 until 2022. Now, the story of the gang led by Thomas “Tommy” Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is being continued in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, which hit the streamer on March 20.
The original series followed the Shelby family, whose criminal enterprise established itself as a major player in the illegal betting and bootlegging rackets in Birmingham, England, during the aftermath of World War I. The Great War played a big role in Tommy's ruthless character.
“Having survived the first World War, to actually come that close to death and see your friends blown to pieces before you and all this trauma that he lived with, I think he was unafraid of death," the actor told Entertainment Weekly in June 2022.
The series incorporated a number of other factual events into its storyline, like the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, the Great Depression and, in later seasons, the build-up to World War II. The Immortal Man will take place during Second World War.
On top of using historical events as a backdrop for the series, Peaky Blinders was also inspired by a real gang. First called the “Small Heath Peaky Blinders,” the gang really was centered in Birmingham.
Here’s everything to know about the true story behind Peaky Blinders and the real gang that inspired the show.
While the Peaky Blinders series picked up after World War I, the real street gang rose to prominence in the 1890s.
Much like the gang featured in the show, the real Blinders were known for their dapper style and could sometimes become viciously violent, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Also similar to the show, the gang was made up of young, working-class men.
However, historians told The Independent that the real Blinders likely didn't fight with razor blades stitched into their caps, as they would have been too expensive.
Gang members did slash knives “across the foreheads of their opponents, causing blood to pour down into their eyes and blind them," Carl Chinn told the publication.
But Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has said otherwise. In a September 2019 GQ essay, Knight revealed the initial inspiration he had for the show, recalling the stories of his mother and father growing up in Birmingham.
"Historians may claim the phrase 'Peaky Blinder' went out of use at the turn of the century, but every uncle and auntie in my family and the grandparents told me the term was alive and kicking into the Thirties," he wrote. "I’ve consistently found books to be an unreliable source of information when it comes to working-class history, since mostly people didn’t bother to write things down."
Once, when Knight's father was a child, he encountered the real Peaky Blinders while being tasked to pass along a note.
“My dad said he stepped inside to find a group of men slouched in chairs,” Knight wrote. “Their fl
Comments