The bleak midwinter between seasons of Peaky Blinders has lasted much longer than anyone expected. It’s been two and a half years since season 5’s bloodbath finale aired back in September 2019 (the halcyon days BC), but finally, the drought is ending.
The sixth series of Peaky Blinders will begin on February 27 - confirmed by a massive mural that went up last week in Digbeth.
It’ll be the final TV series (although creator Steven Knight has revealed his plans for a film) and we’re sure it’ll be worth the wait. After nine years and 30 episodes, the BBC drama has won fans all over the world since it was picked up by Netflix (including Snoop Dogg, who recorded his own version of the show’s theme tune, Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand), so there’s a lot riding on this last chapter of the Brummie gang.
It’s been a while, so for those whose memories are as sketchy as Adrien Brody’s mafioso mumbling, here’s a recap on the series, last season’s cliffhanger, plus all the questions we need answered. By order of the Evening Standard.
Peaky Blinders: the story so far
Fresh from the WW1 battlefields, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his brothers Arthur (Paul Anderson) and John (Joe Cole) return to their grey pocket of Birmingham, Small Heath, and channel their PTSD into running their criminal unit, the Peaky Blinders (based on a real gang who stitched razor blades into the brims of their flat caps).
As their power and prominence grows, they encounter various unsavoury types - Darby Sabini (London mob boss, Noah Taylor), Billy Kimber (rival Brummie gang leader, Charlie Creed-Miles), Alfie Solomons (edgy Camden Town bootlegger, Tom Hardy) - and administer extreme violence and genius strategy to keep their crown. No episode is complete without at least one shot of the Blinders walking in slow-mo geese formation to a killer soundtrack en route to raise hell in some godforsaken corner of interwar England.
After ex-police agent Grace (Annabelle Wallis) falls for Tommy’s charms, the pair marry. But the happily ever after is short-lived: Grace gets caught in a revenge shooting, and is killed in S3. Tommy deals with his grief the only way he knows how - cold, hard revenge. This triggers an eye-for-an-eye war with a bunch of Italian Americans, led by Luca Changretta (Adrien Brody). They begin a vendetta against the family as payback for Arthur shooting Luca’s dad Vicente, but this time it’s John who pays the ultimate price.
In the end, the Peaky Blinders come out on top, and youngest brother Finn (Harry Kirton) is called up to take John’s place.
The new Thomas Shelby, MP
At the start of series 4, we saw Tommy blackmail his way to an OBE, following some unpleasantness with the Russians (which involved exiled aristos, the Economic League and Bolshevik uprisings). It’s his ticket out of Small Heath: he’s gone from bookie gangster to shady businessman and now, Labour MP for Birmingham South. It’s almost inspirational. The old Tommy remains in that iconic haircut (shaved sides, long on top), the gravelly tone, the steely stare. It’s all under a newly-acquired veneer of respectability: sharper tailoring (the dusty black coat is reserved for back alley dealings exclusively), silk ties, even hipster specs! A regular face in Westminster, he has a new foe in series 5.
Peaky Blinders Series 5 Recap
Here’s where we left off, and there’s a lot to unpack: a turf war with Glasgow’s Billy Boys, opium trade deals with the Chinese, double agenting against British fascists, murdering journalists (boo), and cosy chats with Churchill. Half the Shelbys have developed raging coke habits, the other half are addicted to smack, and there are spies everywhere.
A record 6.2m viewers tuned in for the start of series 5, set in the aftershocks of the financial crash in 1929. Shelby cousin Michael Gray, (Finn Cole) parachuted to New York, fails to sell the family’s shares before the crash, going against Tommy’s explicit decree. As a result, the family is down £500k, just over £6m in today’s money. Tommy is furious and ponders Michael’s loyalty while whining that no one listens to him.
S5 baddie 1: fascist leader Oswald Mosley
But someone is listening in Westminster, where Tommy can be found repping his constituency. Oswald Mosley, played by the season’s big name baddie Sam Claflin, is a hungry spider starting to weave his poisonous web. He’s eyeing up Tommy as a juicy fly who can help him get the common man on side. Despite his Romany roots and cosmopolitan criminal gang, Tommy agrees to join his fascist party, planning to pass information to intelligence officers in exchange for lucrative military contracts tendered to the Shelby Company Limited. Less "Britain First", more Shelbys Forever.
S5 baddies 2: the Billy Boys of Glasgow
Meanwhile, Glaswegian gang the Billy Boys, Mosley’s mates, have noticed Tommy’s attention is diverted and make moves on the race tracks where he holds betting licences. A war is triggered when they track hitman-for-hire Aberama Gold (Aiden Gillen) and crucify his son, the Blinders’ prize boxer Bonnie. The grief-stricken Aberama is spared, and sent back to the Shelbys to deliver the message, a bullet in his arm and vengeance burning in his heart.
S5 shady deal 1: the Chinese connection
Michael sails across the Atlantic with his new wife Gina (Anya Taylor-Joy, recently seen in The Queen’s Gambit). He returns to Birmingham where mum Polly (Helen McCrory) meets him off the train with a tongue as sharp as her tailoring. He passes her inquisition and they see Tommy, who also accepts Michael is genuine but warns he’ll have to work off the fortune he lost by taking "appropriate" risks for the family. They make the Roys of Succession look like Sylvanian Families.
Soon, an opportunity arises. They want Michael to head up their coal haulage biz, really a front for transporting contraband, and high-grade opium for the Chinese is first on the list. It’s high-risk, but if he can pull it off, it might be enough to put that rarest of things - a smile - on Tommy’s chops.
S5 shady deal 2: a fragile truce
Not content with collecting £250k from the Chinese for muling their drugs, Tommy skims a bit off the top to sell to the Billy Boys, creating a tissue-thin truce between the gangs. Aberama isn’t thrilled about waiting to settle his score, but Tommy assures him he can strike when the time is right.
S5 major scene 1: Lizzie’s party
After the untimely death of Grace, former Watery Lane working girl Lizzie (Natasha O’Keefe) is now Tommy’s wife. In episode 4, he invites new BFF Mosley to her birthday bash and plans to get him to guarantee a £10k cheque from the Billy Boys for their cut of the opium - his signature will prove a connection that Tommy can pass on to British Intelligence.
Lizzie’s birthday ballet performance is interrupted by Linda (Kate Phillips), Arthur’s estranged wife, pelting up the driveway with a bullet for her husband: she’s after revenge for him beating her Quaker friend to a pulp with an iron bar. “He’s as ugly on the outside now as you are on the inside”, she growls, finger on the trigger, before Polly breaks off her post-proposal coitus with Aberama and takes her down with a single shot. She survives, and, after rousing from a stupor induced by heroin administered as pain relief, leaves Arthur wobbly-lipped as she exits his life for good.
Meanwhile Mosley is striding about giving an impassioned speech to the guests. He blames foreign factories for England’s demise, shames the media for spreading false news, and hypes the crowd with yells of “Britain First!” The parallels to recent headlines are hard to ignore.
S5 major scene 2: the car bomb
All the while, Tommy has been passing intel on Mosley to intelligence officer Colonel Ben Younger (Kingsley Ben-Adir), who has gotten Tommy’s sister Ada (Sophie Rundle) up the duff, news for everyone but him. Tommy passes him proof of Moseley’s ties to the Billy Boys but Younger is blown up by a car bomb before he can do anything with it. Who knew that Younger would be at Tommy’s Birmingham HQ? No time to ponder: the ever-resourceful Tommy devises a new plan. He breaks out ex-army sniper Barney from a lunatic asylum to assassinate Mosley. Good idea, but why has Barney only just surfaced? Still, better this psychopath than none at all.
S5 major scene 3: Michael tries to take the crown
Michael gets his brass neck out and proposes restructuring the company (phasing out Tommy, Polly and Arthur) to make the opium coal business the centrepiece of Shelby Company Ltd’s operations, making obscenely bold moves on Tommy’s crown. Naturally the top dogs aren’t happy and Michael is swiftly disowned. He and Gina slink off, presumably to enact plan B.
S5 major scene 4: Arthur and Tommy catch a rat
The Garrison’s barkeep turns out to be the informant whose leaks caused the car bomb that killed Colonel Younger. He also tipped off Irish unit The Titanic about Arthur collecting the Chinese opium which led to a fierce firefight. It feels like a torture scene is approaching, but instead Tommy shoots him quick and clean through the head. Has he lost his blood thirst, or is he merely on a tight schedule? *checks pocket watch*
S5 major plot twist 1: the resurrection of Alfie Solomons
It turns out one of the reasons Tommy kept his torture tools clean was that he has a meeting to keep. He arrives in Margate to meet frenemy Alfie Solomons (Tom Hardy) who is somehow still alive despite being shot in the face at the end of S3. Spending his afterlife shooting at passing ships and seagulls, he enquires about Tommy’s new life. “Politics: gangsters, wars, truces. Nothing I didn’t already know.” Add motivational speaker to that man’s CV.
Tommy reveals his plan to slay Mosley - “Kill the man, kill the message” - and enlists Alfie to get Jewish rabble-rousers at Mosley’s Birmingham rally and start a riot against the fascists. With the police occupied, no one will spot the seven tonnes of opium gliding along the canals, steered by Peaky Blinders towards a £250k handling fee. Smooth sailing.
S5 major scene 5: Polly’s resignation
Fed up with Tommy’s endless convoluted drama, Polly, the real backbone of the Shelby Company Ltd, resigns. Very few people knew of Helen McCrory’s illness when the episode aired, but how the writers left this crucial character in S5’s finale feels like a natural way for her to exit. Knight and his team have promised to do it sensitively in tribute to the late actress.
S5 firework-laden finale and major plot twist 2: riot day
Arthur welcomes and arms Alfie’s mayhem makers. Meanwhile, reluctant Peaky Blinder Billy Grade, a pub singer with football connections who’s been fixing matches for the gang, makes a mystery call after Finn Shelby, his line manager (in more ways than one; they’re coke buddies too) leaves for the riots.
The auditorium is packed with Blinders and Billy Boys, still obeying an uneasy truce, mingled amongst Mosley’s supporters. Everyone gets into position, with Barney up in the projector’s booth with a sniper rifle for company.
Mosley walks through a crowd doing the Nazi salute and chanting “Perish Judah” before taking the stage, chest puffed in misplaced righteousness. As Alfie’s Jews storm the auditorium, Tommy uses the chaos to signal Barney but he’s shot by a shadowy figure before he can pull the trigger. Aberama sees his chance to avenge his son and moves on Billy Boys boss Jimmy McCavern, but he too is discovered and shanked by an unknown man. An attempt is made on Arthur but he fights them off. Tommy’s plan is rapidly unravelling. Someone betrayed them - who?
Tommy and Arthur retreat back to the house and Tommy stalks off into the misty fields. An apparition of ex-wife and one true love Grace encourages him to end it all, and the final scene is of a crazed man on the very edge, mouth stretched in rage with a pistol at his head.
Peaky Blinders Series 6: The Big Questions
Is Linda really gone for good?
She’s stood by him through the worst of it, and even helped him find God, but in later scenes, we see Linda succumb to Arthur’s vices with a particular fondness for “snow” (cocaine). Through his spies, Mosley learns she is seeking solace from a male friend she met at a Quaker group, and goads Arthur into believing the two are sleeping together, knowing this will tip the most violence-prone Shelby over the edge. He responds predictably, but a blood-splattered Arthur isn’t new to Linda. Will this God-fearing woman really break her sacred marriage vows for this unsurprising behaviour? She knew what she was getting into.
Who was on the other end of Billy Grade’s phone call?
We don’t know much about Billy; the character first appeared in Ep2, S5 and has had few scenes. But the shot of him reaching for the telephone is clearly of great significance what with it making the finale’s final cut. Who did he call? Could there be more than one rat aboard the good ship Shelby? Surely Tommy’s pals at the telephone exchange will be able to shed some light.
Who killed Barney and Aberama?
In a back room after it all goes wrong, Tommy racks his and Arthur’s brains on who could have double-crossed them. The Chinese, punishing Tommy for skimming their drugs? The Italians, back with a vengeance? Alfie, who has form? The British Intelligence branch? It’s hard to know when you’ve got a list of enemies so long it could go twice around the Bullring.
Did the Chinese get their opium?
In the fray of the rally riots, there’s no further mention of the lucrative heroin shipment. Did it make it into the right hands, has another gang intercepted the loot, or is Curly off his face in Charlie’s yard?
What is Michael Gray’s plan B?
The snake and his wife have made it clear they think they’re the next generation to take over Shelby Company Ltd. Will S6 see him pull off a coup d’état? Can Gina be trusted? She was giving Mosley the serious eye at Lizzie’s birthday party, and he was shown shagging a mystery blonde before his rally speech - the back of her head looked strikingly similar to Gina’s golden locks. Are the two in bed together?
Will Churchill help?
Tommy’s political about-face hasn’t gone unnoticed and he’s soon summoned for whiskies with Churchill who asks why Tommy is spying on Mosley. Tommy looks tired, he hasn’t been sleeping. "I don’t even know any more", he sighs into the fire. Winston is satisfied that Tommy is offing Mosley for the right reasons, and offers assistance. Will the future wartime PM and our hero team up for a fascist takedown?
Who will be this season’s baddie?
So far we’ve had fire and brimstone policeman Sam Neil, slippery priest Paddy Considine, and Adrien Brody’s mafioso angel of death, not to mention the sadistic Billy Boys. Last season’s finale saw Mosley and McCavern emerge unscathed, but with news that the new series will kick off in post-Prohibition America, will either be back to cause Tommy more grief? Or will a familiar face emerge from the shadows for round two? TV’s does-no-wrong Liverpudlian Stephen Graham is in this series but what guise will he take: friend or foe?
