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Peaky Blinders features an ensemble cast, led by Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory, and Paul Anderson, starring as Tommy Shelby, Elizabeth "Polly" Gray, and Arthur Shelby, respectively, the gang's senior members. Sam Neill, Annabelle Wallis, Iddo Goldberg, Charlotte Riley, Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine, Adrien Brody, Aidan Gillen, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sam Claflin, and Stephen Graham, also have recurring roles at various times of the series. The show premiered on 12 September 2013, telecast on BBC Two until the fourth series, and then shifted to BBC One for the fifth and upcoming sixth series.
The fifth series premiered on BBC One on 25 August 2019 and finished on 22 September 2019. Netflix, under the deal with Weinstein Company and Endemol, had acquired the rights to release Peaky Blinders in the United States and around the world. In January 2021, it was announced that series six would be the last.
Peaky Blinders is an epic centered on a gangster family of Irish-Romani origin set in Birmingham, England, starting in 1919, several months after the end of the First World War in November 1918. The story centres on the Peaky Blinders gang and their ambitious and highly cunning boss Tommy Shelby (Murphy). The gang comes to the attention of Major Chester Campbell (Neill), a detective chief inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary sent over by Winston Churchill from Belfast, where he had been sent to clean up the city of the Irish Republican Army, Communists, gangs, and common criminals.[2][3] Winston Churchill (played by Andy Nyman in series 1 and Richard McCabe in series 2) charged him with suppressing disorder and uprising in Birmingham and recovering a stolen cache of arms meant to be shipped to Libya.[4][5] The first series concludes on 3 December 1919 – "Black Star Day", the event where the Peaky Blinders plan to take over Billy Kimber's betting pitches at the Worcester Races.
The second series has the Peaky Blinders expand their criminal organisation in the "South and North while maintaining a stronghold in their Birmingham heartland."[6] It begins in 1921 and ends with a climax at Epsom racecourse on 31 May 1922 – Derby Day.[7]
The third series starts and ends in 1924, as it follows Tommy and the gang entering an even more dangerous world as they once again expand, this time internationally. The third series also features Father John Hughes (Paddy Considine), who is involved in an anticommunist organisation; Ruben Oliver (Alexander Siddig), a painter whom Polly enlists to paint her portrait; Russian Duchess Tatiana Petrovna (Gaite Jansen); and Linda Shelby (Kate Phillips), new wife of Arthur.
The fourth series begins on Christmas Eve 1925, and ends following the general strike of May 1926, with Tommy using Jessie Eden for information and being elected as a Member of Parliament in 1927.
The fifth series begins two years later on 29 October 1929 (Black Tuesday) and ends on 7 December 1929, the morning after a rally led by fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
