Peaky Blinders is a British crime drama television series created by Steven Knight, that premiered on BBC Two on 12 September 2013. The series is primarily set in Birmingham, England, and follows the exploits of the Shelby crime family in the aftermath of World War I. The fictional gang is loosely based on the Peaky Blinders, a real 19th- century urban youth gang who were active in the city from the 1890s to the early twentieth century. Cillian Murphy stars as Tommy Shelby, the gang's leader, with Helen McCrory as Tommy's aunt Elizabeth "Polly" Gray and Paul Anderson as his older brother Arthur Shelby respectively, who serve as the gang's second-most senior members.
In May 2018, after the show's Drama Series win at the BAFTA TV Awards, Knight confirmed his "ambition of making it a story of a family between two wars, and by ending it with the first air raid siren in Birmingham", which was 25 June 1940. After the conclusion of the fourth series, he confirmed that it would take another three series (seven in total) to complete the story up to that point. The fifth series premiered on BBC One on 25 August 2019 and finished on 22 September 2019.
The gang called the Peaky Blinders who operated in Birmingham in the early 1900s. Pictured from left to right are Henry Fowler, Ernest Bayles, Stephen McHickie and Thomas Gilbert (two pictures of him - one with cap, one without)
And while Cillian Murphy's character Thomas Shelby is a work of fiction, what the gang got up to was just as dramatic, violent and dark as the show makes out.
Their name, Peaky Blinders, is said to have come from gang members stitching razor blades into the peak of their flat caps.
The Peaky Blinders' girlfriends also had a uniform of sorts, including pearls, a large fringe and a silk handkerchief covering their throats.
Professor Carl Chinn, a Birmingham-based historian who began researching these infamous Brummie gangs back in the 1980s and has written a book called The Real Peaky Blinders, is pleased the programme has brought his beloved hometown into the spotlight.
Peaky Blinders was created by Steven Knight, directed by Ottoifra Bathurst, and produced by Katie Swinden.
Screen Yorkshire provided funding for the production through the Yorkshire Content Fund, ensuring that the majority of the show was filmed in Yorkshire as part of the deal. The series was filmed in Birmingham, Bradford, Dudley, Leeds, Liverpool, and Port Sunlight.[13] Railway sequences were filmed between Keighley and Damems, using carriages from the Ingrow Museum of Rail Travel.
A second series was commissioned shortly after the broadcast of the first and aired in the autumn of 2014.[8] On 11 January 2014, Series 2 begins with the Peaky Blinders looking to expand their operation into London but they upset some powerful people in doing so. Later; with the help of Tommy, Polly steps up her search for her missing son; Tommy initiates his plan to take over the southern racecourses; and with new ally Arthur in tow, the Peaky Blinders make a serious move on London's Eden Club.
On 5 October 2015, the official Peaky Blinders Twitter account announced that filming had begun for series 3. Filming wrapped on 22 January 2016, after 78 days of shooting.
Peaky Blinders series three opened with a lavish wedding. After the hushed-up suicide of Grace’s husband, she returned from New York with her and Tommy’s baby son (conceived during series two’s extra-marital fling) to make an honest man of Thomas Shelby - literally so.
During the initial broadcast of series 3, the BBC renewed Peaky Blinders for series 4 and 5.Filming for series 4 started in March 2017 and premiered on 15 November 2017 on BBC Two. Creator and writer Steven Knight authored series 4 and returned to write every episode of series 5.Series 4 begins in December 1925. Tommy Shelby OBE has acquired unprecedented legitimacy. The former gangster is also a man alone, estranged from his family and focused only on his business.
On 22 August 2018, the BBC confirmed that series 5 would be broadcast on BBC One. Having already premiered to a select audience at Birmingham Town Hall on 18 July 2019, the series began airing on BBC One on 25 August 2019.
On 5 May 2018, Steven Knight told Birmingham Press Club that "we are definitely doing [series] six and we will probably do seven ,Series 5 of the crime family saga finds the world thrown into turmoil by the financial crash of 1929.
Thomas 'Tommy' Shelby
Alfie Solomons
Elizabeth 'Polly'
Major Chester Campbel
Grace Burgess
John Shelby
Ada Thorne
Arthur Shelby
In the first quarter of last century, hairstyles were totally different from what it is nowadays . Here is a video about how they chose the hairstyles as well as clothes to represent the that time .
You may ask where are all these places located , these old cities, factories and buildings which gives you the impression that these scenes were actually filmed at the same time of the story and the answer is Visual Effects.
In this video the production team reviews their utilization of the possibilities in the streets of Manchester to turn them into a suitable environment for the scenes that where filmed in very short periods of time.
Peaky Blinders hired production offices and studio space at Studio 81 on Kirkstall Road in leeds.To realise 1919 Birmingham was always going to be a massive challenge. The Birmingham they needed to recreate, doesn’t exist anymore. it was decided that Yorkshire is the best place to base the drama ‘Peaky Blinders’. A combination of fantastic period locations, great crew and support from Screen Yorkshire and the local council. Most of our filming was in Leeds and supplemented by shooting a couple of key locations in Liverpool and Birmingham.
Peaky Blinders has returned to our screens for series five of the hit BBC drama about the Shelby family set in the lawless streets of 1920s Birmingham. But while the action may be based in Brum’s Small Heath, producers now use locations across the north west to recreate the gangster period. And Manchester locations feature heavily in the new series five, as the cast and crew were spotted filming at a number of locations in the region over the past year.
Although the real-life Peaky Blinders were based in Birmingham, and the show is set mostly in the city, not much of the show is actually filmed there - with most of the shots being filmed in Liverpool, and some at the Granada Studios in Manchester.
Despite being set very firmly in 1920s Birmingham, very little of Peaky Blinders is filmed in the city due to the war that had destroied alot of its remarkable buildings and also due to the town planning that changed the face of the old city. The nearest we get to Birmingham is the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley.
