may you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you’re dead | peaky blinders

[lady_with_cats]

this week, whilst procrastinating i watched peaky blinders. it's a bbc drama, set post-wwi with a focus on a street gang led by the shelby family in birmingham. it's really, REALLY good. for one thing it's wonderfully shot and cast, and says a lot of interesting stuff about post-war society in england.

[GOOD STUFF + REASONS]

• for one thing cillian murphy is REALLY good as the main character. he plays tommy shelby as a ruthless, violent gangster and you love him anyway (or maybe even because of it). for all that's he's a terrible person, he's also a person that deeply and reliably loves his family. the way he bounces off the other family members is a delight of it's own, but he also has amazing interactions with his main love interest and his ex-best friend. they write and portray him as someone who is clearly doing immoral stuff but also someone with a deep pathos and humanity and it's just soooooo good to see unfold. your heart breaks everytime they mention how he was "before the war"; it's a beautiful way to underscore what lurks beneath the surface.
• helen mcrory plays aunt pol, the woman who ran the family's criminal enterprise during the war. she's fabulous in the role and really saves some of the more melodramatic plotlines. she's got such a great spine of steel and i loooooove that's she never lets the boys forget she could outsmart them all on a bad day.
• the main love interest grace, is an amazing character in her own right. they subvert the usual 'bad guy falls in love with the girl' by making her an undercover police officer (possibly a crown spy? it's not clear) working to find a stolen shipment of guns and prevent IRA/communist activity. this puts her in direct conflict with tommy who has the guns (albiet accidentally) and who's best friend is a communist revolutionary/in love with tommy's sister ada. THIS SEEMS COMPLICATED but basically it works to put them at crosspurposes even as they fall in love with each other. it's a sort of cruel irony that they never would have met, never would have found each other but for all the terrible things the both of them had to live through. AND she gets her own arc where she's looking to revenge her father's death at the hands of the IRA. She and Tommy really come off as equals for all the ostensible power imbalances. tommy is utterly sure of everything except her. and she understands everyone except him.
• THE SOUNDTRACK!!!! IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!! just trust me.
• they do a lot of textual and subtextual social commentary. all of the characters are largely working class non-londoners. grace is "posh", but also irish and from the family of a policeman. they explore the war, and explicitly talk about how their class meant they were doing some of the most dangerous jobs in the trenches, and ultimately "they volunteered for it" because they had no choice and they had their pride. it made them into weapons inflicting death and then everyone expected them to blunt their edges themselves when they returned home. they very effectively establish the violence, death and hopelessness and how led to ongoing effects/ptsd on the ex-servicemen. a lot of the characters self-medicate with opium and alcohol & the show very subtly talks about how that does/doesn't work. it ALSO touches on police corruption, racism & sexism. THE WOMEN IN THIS ARE SO WELL WRITTEN! ughhhh. just a++++.
• i haven;t even mentioned the politics. the way the police/gangs/revolutionaries intersect is fascinating, especially when they approach communism from a WORKING CLASS PERSPECTIVE. this isn't spies and the cold war, but wages and factories and post-war movements. just YES.
• I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED SOME OF THE SECONDARY CHARACTERS THEY'RE ALL RLY GREAT TOO UGHHHHH.

in conclusion watch peaky blinders, you won't regret it.