After enjoying gangster/mafia series like The Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, I got my hopes up when a lot of friends recommended The Peaky Blinders and said it was as god and of the same kind. But to my great disapointment it was nothing like it and I will tell you why.
But first things first, for they who don't know the story, here are a summary (copied from BBC):
"A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a
gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce
boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world"
If one only would judge this series from reading the summary and looking at the first 10 minutes of the first episodes, then one really would get close to Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos. One would get a peak in early 20th century workings class Britain and its different ethnic communitys (to be more precise, Pikeys, Chinese and Italian). One would get the dysfunctional and ever so tensional dynamics of a gangster family (and its psycological underside). One would get a cool and racy rock music and slow motion fights, that gives the series and extra suspens dimension.
But you get non of this at its best in The Peaky Blinders. The historic and social theme it promises is totally overshadowed by an completly uninteresting family with it melo and boring boss Tommy. Because what could have been a portrait of workings class England in 1919, with all its tension and possible explosions of caos and unrest (organized by the communists and IRA). Because even though it's true that the scenery is beautiful and eye opening (for example, I didn't know that drank beer out of buckets), you don't get any view of society, of how people socialized or thought at the time. One only get to some stupid rallying at an empty warehouse and Tommys negotiation with some random IRA. But why get no clue at all why the communists are rallying in the warehouse and why the IRA are negotiating with Tommy. We don't even get to see how or for what they are fighting for. No, we don't even get a real peak at the Pikey, Chinese and Italian communities. We just get some very uncoherent glimpse of there clothes and houses.
All this is in complete contrast with Boardwalk Empire, where you get a thorough view of the North East of United States, with tons of historical references (from J. Edgar Hoover to Marcus Garvey and from Joe Kennedy to Al Capone). One really gets a very wide view of the gangster world and how it spills over in rest of society.
So if one looks aside from the historic theme and diggs in to the "gangster family epic" is one satisfied with that? Absolutly not! It doesn't come close in being a "epic". Because who cares about Johns children and dead with, if we know nothing about them or the consequences it has on Johns behavior or thoughts? Why should one care if Tommy has a trauma from the Great War, if we get no idea how it affects is life today? Maybe one would say that it because the war he wants Grace, that she makes him trust and "to feel" again. But why does Grace make him feel this? We don't get any psycological explanation of the characters, not even any hints of what's happening in their heads, in their insides. The only exception we get to this is Tommys flashbacks and Owens PTSD. But Tommy's trauma from the Great War is an exception, a isolated happening, that maybe gives him nightmares and slight hallucinations but doesn't give us an explanation why he is a gangster, how it affect him in being an gangsterboss. It's not shown at all.
Anybody that have seen The Sopranos could be satisfied with this empty and flat psyhe of Tommy if one compares it with the deepth of the psychotic escapist Tony Soprano. But do one always need this rich psychological deepth of a character? Maybe not. An example of this is Breaking Bad main character Walter Whites and his shallow "will to live" as the explanation to everything he's done. Or even the relational drama that is the main story in The Americans and magnificant depction of a middle age relationship. So both in Breaking Bad and The Americans we crave to know how they will resolve there problems, how they will conquer their antagonism. But where is the anagonism in The Peaky Blinders? With the Communists? No. With the IRA? No. With the Police? No (or at least not a real enemy untill the police finds the guns). With the Lee brothers and Kimber? For a while, but the conflict is never intense. Intense as we don't get any passional hate towards the the antagonist or will to hurt or conquer antagonist. I mean, the whole Shelby family is still mellow and traumatized by the Great War. They don't have a passion for anything. Not for sex, drugs and rockn'roll. Not for "fancy parties and big house" and not for power.
Just say something about the racy music and slow motion fights. They don't fool anybody. One doesn't get a amazed by those effects. Instead they only make it more clear how one is not arused by the series. How it is flat and the sound and visual effect only are empty gestures, only try to awaken something that is not there.
To really give a consisce summary, then one can say that The Peaky Blinders fail with their depction of the historic theme in a similar way as The Mob City does and The Peaky blinders fail with their depction of a interesting family how trys to keep is power and family together in the same way as Magic City.
So do not get fooled by the first ten minutes or the commecrcial. Because that is how good the series get. Don't forget that life is finite, don't waste it.
