Peaky Blinders

They are filming the next season currently but with the world how it is I decided to write about what is already on Netflix. I'll add to this later I guess. This took me a couple of tries to watch. I started watching it years ago with my husband and we only got a few episodes in and never tried again. It's pretty slow moving most of the time. But this year I decided to try it again. After all I had just finish Gotham, another show that I had given up and then become obsessed with once trying again. I didn't have the same exact motivation but kind of because Bane was the pull for both of them... Obviously Bane was in Gotham and he was sexy Shane West. But then Bane and Scarcrow from the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy are big characters in Peaky Blinders... So I changed my mind. I watched both of these shows for Bane. Anyway, this show follows Cillian Murphey (who is Irish) playing an Irish Traveller who the show calls gypsys. I actually had to research this because the show takes place in Birmingham and the original peaky blinders are not actually Irish so I was confused but I think the show just takes liberties to make sense of Cillian being in the lead role. He is very good though. Ironically the only other Irish actor that they mentioned in the Wiki article is Aiden Gillen (Littlefinger GOT) all the other big characters are played by English people except the cop in the first season who is from New Zealand! Far from home! Oh my goodness back to the show! Peaky Blinder are a real life gang who ruled Birmingham after most of them come back from WWI broken and confused but eager to become wealthy and successful, and keep the "family" together. In the show, Arthur is the oldest but he's more angry and less controlled than Tommy so eventually Tommy takes over as the boss with John another brother taking more of a behind the scenes or follower role on account of him having 4 kids and I assumed a dead wife who is unknown to us. Younger brother Finn is still a child until basically the 5th season and without any parent's he's raised by his brothers, aunt, and probably a few other close gang members. Unfortunately Tom Hardy's character is fake but he's um charismatic? He's a Jewish gang leader who has all these weird quarks. And I'm not used to his accent but I've never been to Camden. I also appreciated Iddo Goldberg even though he's not in very much of the series but he's on the Shane West show Salem. Kingsley Ben-Adair was in Zoe Kravitz' High Fidelity which I've also writen about. Sam Claflin of Hunger Games and Adrian Brody are also characters that it took me a second to recognize.Sam Claflin plays a real historical politician and Jessie Eden was a true story communist party organizer. I'm shocked that I didn't know this was based off actual history. It makes sense, it's clearly a period drama. Once I got into it I couldn't stop watching it. I've always been scared of Cillian because Scarecrow was the first character I saw him as and that guy is creepy. I also really didn't understand Inception so that didn't win me over either. But the way he is in this show is perfect. He sets everything up like a master manipulater and the way he protects his family and the loyalty they all show him is inspirational. I'm really glad I watched this show even though it is slow sometimes. It's slow in that way where you really build on the characters and feel all of their emotions and then when something happens to them it all happens in real time like it's happening to you. This is basically just a brilliant show.