With the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders now upon us, the Second World War approaches and viewers are wondering what the future holds for Tommy and the rest of the Shelbys. Steven Knight has long teased a six-seasons-and-a-movie plan for the series, but could there be more to come from the Peakys in the future?
Speaking to us at The Digital Fix, Knight did not rule out the story of the Peakys extending beyond the movie; “I’d love to say that I’ve got control over what I’m going to write, but I don’t really have conscious control over how the thing is going to end, even though I tried to have a destination in mind. So I’ve always had the Second World War destination.”
He concluded; “But then, for me, writing is quite a chaotic process, and you read it back and see where it’s going, and let that have the authority. So it turns out that there’s more to tell, and so I want to tell that in the form of the film. And then, subsequent to that, who knows where we’ll be?”
Peaky Blinders started almost a decade ago, in 2013, and was initially set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. A shell-shocked Tommy (Cillian Murphy) and his brothers Arthur (Paul Anderson) and John Shelby (Joe Cole) return from war and immediately start building up their betting empire, as gangsters who rule the streets of Birmingham under the watchful eye of matriarch Aunt Polly (Helen McCrory).
The series follows through the boom-and-bust period of the 1920s, into the rise of fascism in the 1930s, with the introduction of Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin) as a main character. Over the years, many acclaimed actors have appeared in the series including Sam Neill, Aidan Gillen, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Paddy Considine, Stephen Graham, Tom Hardy and Anya Taylor-Joy.
If you’re a fan of the Peaky Blinders, you might be interested in the final seasons of more shows set in criminal underworlds – Better Call Saul and Ozark.