Of late, I’ve lost the patience to watch long TV shows. Surprisingly, the pandemic made me want to watch series even less and instead I wasted a lot of time on YouTube watching short British comedy clips. I was then pleasantly surprised when I got hooked on to watching Peaky Blinders on Netflix.

Growing up reading primarily British authors, I have developed some fascination with their history. It doesn’t hurt that their history is intertwined with India. I loved that Peaky Blinders gives a peek into the period between the two world wars, how the First World War completely changed people’s lives and disrupted social hierarchies and ways of living. A whole nation suffering from PTSD.

I love the cinematography of this series. The grimy parts of the city seem genuinely grueling and then in the later seasons, occasionally, when you get a chance to see the countryside, you cannot but be shocked by the contrasting dreamy quality of it. In the last season (or is it the penultimate one?), when the focus is on Tommy’s mental anguish and insomnia, you can feel the change in the lighting and the camera movement. Everything is hazy and dimly lit and you constantly feel uncomfortable because several scenes are shot from the POV of a moving character.

And what an opening scene! You see Tommy Shelby on a racehorse, amidst the morning mists and the street filth, waiting for a Chinese shaman to put a spell on it. You just know from the get-go that this is not an ordinary gangster series.

The best bit is obviously the characters. Every single character is superbly written and perfectly played. The characters start out very superficial and gradually acquire incredible depth as the series progresses. The most fascinating is of course Tommy Shelby. He starts out as a shell-shocked, lowly gangster with some superhuman cunning but gradually evolved into a paranoid and greedy monster, simultaneously improving and ruining the lives of everyone around him. Someone who has truly sold their soul to the devil. You really cannot make your mind up about whether to like him or loathe him.

Can’t wait for the final season.