Tommy Shelby sure knows how to make enemies. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/BBC/Caryn Mandabach/Tiger Aspect To the devil, a devil dog … Father John Hughes and his unfriendly canine prepare for a visit. He was right – and making the best of a bad job once John had done the damage – but how easy is it to fight so many wars on so many different fronts? “If we lift our heel off their necks now they will come at us,” said Tommy. The Shelby’s might, as John said, hold Birmingham, London and the whole of “fucking England” but can they keep that grip while being squeezed on all sides? I’m not so sure. But grabbing power is also considerably easier than retaining it.
Is Inspector Moss (fast becoming my new favourite character) right to state that Tommy “loves the sport of it”? I think yes, in part – as he reminded Polly last week, he is a gambling man and part of him will always want to roll the dice in a tricky situation (as he did with Father Hughes and the dog). Yet it was Tommy’s reaction that was really interesting here. I’m also pretty sure he kicked off about Angel Changretta because he still has a soft spot for Lizzie, no matter how much he canoodles with the perpetually pregnant Esme in the Peaky Blinders office. He’s comfortable with his violence and revels in the power that being a Peaky Blinder brings. Where Arthur is traumatised by his experiences in the tunnels and trenches, and Tommy has locked those thoughts deep inside him (only for them to occasionally surface almost accidentally – as they did this week when he first saw the tanks), John is almost freed by his experience.
John has always intrigued me, especially given his comments last series about having killed men in the first world war by the time he was Michael’s age. As it is, Arthur has lost his taste (if not capacity) for violence, Michael is clearly scheming on the side (and how convenient that the flapper from last week turns out to have a daddy who’s a big cheese in the automobile world), the Lees are siphoning off cocaine for themselves rather than doping the horses and John is arguably a looser canon than even Arthur, picking the unnecessary fight with the Italians that led to Grace’s shooting. Life would be much easier for Tommy if he could rely on his family. With his list of enemies growing by the day, is Tommy Shelby’s luck finally about to run out? Photograph: Robert Viglasky/BBC/Caryn Mandabach/Tiger Aspect There’s a lot at stake – and, judging by the conversation between Grand Duke Leon and his formidable wife, more than even Tommy knows. There’s a point in every series of Peaky Blinders where it seems that Tommy has bitten off more than he can chew, yet somehow he always manages to carve a path through. Still, it was a great climax to a strong episode as Tommy’s constantly spinning plates – Shelby business, Russian business, Grace business, Economic League business – threatened to overwhelm him once and for all. She’s always seemed pretty unkillable I predict an Adrian from Rocky-style coma for much of the season. And so it came to pass, as this episode ended with Grace lying wounded in her husband’s arms as Polly ran desperately for an ambulance and Arthur and John beat the living hell out of the Neapolitan assassin called in to do the job.Īs to how serious Grace’s injury is – I’m not sure. B efore this series started I interviewed creator Steven Knight, who told me that “things would come back to bite the Shelby gang”.