Thank goodness, then, for the ever-pragmatic Ada, who arrived from Boston determined to bash some sense into her family’s collective skull. Worst off of all, however, was Polly, who was self-medicating with drugs and drink, holding seances for passing thieves and communing sadly with her dead daughter while refusing to acknowledge either her real son, Michael, or her surrogate one, Tommy. Michael was nurturing a budding cocaine habit, Arthur chafing against the suffocating embrace of bucolic bliss with Linda, and John and Esme locked in their usual dance of sex and shouting, albeit with much bigger surroundings to scream at each other in. Not that Tommy’s good deed was particularly appreciated by the rest of his family, all of whom began the episode suffering in their own ways. This was certainly the case with the episode’s opening minutes, in which Pol, Arthur, John and Michael were saved from hanging by a late, late reprieve, which was both utterly ludicrous and entirely enjoyable (I was particularly taken with the fact that Tommy squeezed in a quick request for an OBE whilst bargaining for his family’s lives). One of the great joys of Peaky Blinders is how much Steven Knight pushes the plotlines to the edge of acceptability. Hold on to your seatbelts, everyone – this looks as if it’s going to be one hell of a ride. For 18 episodes, Nick Cave has sung about a gathering storm, and it now truly feels as though that storm is coming in the shape of Adrien Brody’s vengeance-driven Luca Changretta and his not-so-merry mafia men.
123MOVIES PEAKY BLINDERS SEASON 4 CRACKER
This was a cracker of an opening episode, tense, well-paced and hinting at a welcome return to tightly plotted form after the baroque Russian excesses of the last series. Oh John, if only you could have seen out your days pretending you were a country squire while ineptly shooting at pheasants with a handgun … He wasn’t the smartest brother, nor even the best at killing people, but I always had a soft spot for the hot-headed John with his empty bravado, big “We’re the Peaky fucking Blinders” speeches and not-so-deeply buried pain. Let’s all take a deep breath and raise a glass to John Shelby.