The Peaky Blinders

I have now completed the fourth season of Peaky Blinders, a series streaming on Netflix but I don’t think I will continue with its final two seasons. This program follows a gang in working class Birmingham, Britain in the immediate years following World War I. Historically, there did exista prominent gang called the Peaky Blinders in about 1890 but historically during the time frame in which the series takes place by the beginnings of the first world war the Peaky Blinders had lost its power. But in the series the gang develops in the years after the armistice and is led by members of the Shelby family some of whose members have fought in France and been psychologically damaged by their experience. The show hints that the violence of the gang is related to these injuries. This theme reminded me of Walter Hill’s film The Long Riders that had offered a somewhat sympathetic picture of the James Gang who had learned their violence in the Civil War and then been embittered by their betrayal by governments after Lee’s surrender. The doings of the Peaky Blinders included bookmaking, assault, extortion, fraud murder, rape, fencing, hooliganism, bribery, smuggling, hijacking and robbery. I wonder what other criminal events could there have been beyond this list, and I am yet puzzled what might define hooliganism to distinguish it from the other listed criminal behaviors? Clearly, the Peaky Blinders in fact and in fiction were not very nice people. 
            In any event, in each season screened (I repeat, I have completed four seasons and thus far have refrained from committing to the final two seasons for reasons I will attempt to explain below) the Peaky Blinders, led by the fictitious and ferocious Shelby family, that had started as a violent street gang in Birmingham, a city that was already beset by rival gangs, slowly and violently eliminate their rivals and grasp total control of the city, sometimes engaging in illegal activities and sometimes appropriating legal enterprises that they ten work to corrupt. Slowly, Thomas Shelby, the gang’s leader along with his entire family, attempt to move toward a legitimacy, not unlike that sought by Michael Corleone in Coppola’s The Godfather. But the legitimacy of both is continually undercut by the necessities of their illegal enterprises and the efforts of their sworn enemies against whom they must continually defend by violent confrontation.
            The Shelby family show no loyalty to anyone but themselves and they are prepared to double-cross anyone who obstructs their grasp. At the end of this fourth season, Thomas Shelby has offered the British government help in defeating the socialists and communists in exchange for a seat in Parliament that he wins in what is clearly an election corrupted by the stranglehold that the Blinders have on Small Heath, Birmingham. Thomas Shelby has conspiratorially but deceitfully committed to Jessie Eden, a woman with whom he sleeps, to aid in the socialist revolution if she will aid in his campaign. Shelby is loyal to nobody but himself and his family, and even they are vulnerable to his machinations.
            If one wants to watch how deep is the depth of corruption in society, then one has only to stick with the seasons of Peaky Blinders. In the seasons that I have already screened every element of society—the church, law enforcement, government, industry, horse racing, and boxing are shown to be deeply involved in corrupt and illegal activities. The world of post-World War I Britain in Birmingham and beyond are environments poisoned by immoral and dangerous behaviors.
            The introductory credits at the beginning of each episode of the Peaky Blinders cautions that the show contains bad language, violence and gore. This is no exaggeration. Over the years I have viewed all seasons of the American series The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire. These are certainly shows abounding in violence. But the extent of corruption evident in Peaky Blinders is so pervasive that it makes the world several shades darker and more dangerous. In Peaky Blinders no segment of society is free from despoil. But I recognize that life in the United States at this moment is so dangerous to our liberties that I cannot bear to engage the social portrait offered in Peaky Blinders. It is enough to glance at the newspapers to be soiled and despoiled.