Peaky Blinders Series 4

Peaky Blinders has long been my number one favourite TV drama, and being the phenomenal pessimist that I am, I'm constantly expecting it to go downhill. However, much to my surprise and happiness, it shows no sign of slowing down or getting stale. This series starts with the Shelby family stuck in a rut of good living, security and utter boredom and for the first 20 minutes of the first episode, I thought it was over with this show. A year of peace made all the characters became dull, slightly insane and repulsive. But it turns out that if there is one thing that does not become the Shelby family, it is peace. When a vendetta from the New York Italian mafia threatens to wipe them out, everything comes together again and the show goes back to being its usual sharp, tense, heartstopping self. I have only two major negative remarks (of course I must have some!) First of all, they tried to stuff too much in, Tommy is facing both the mafia vendetta and threats of a strike and Communist revolution, and it's just too much to properly deal with, the political plot is always pushed into the background, and I kept forgetting it even existed. Only in the last few minutes of the last episode does it become clear why it was so important. His 'interest' in Jessie Eden (also part of the political plot) was not convincing at all, I thought her a most un-interesting character. My other objection is for god's sake to stop using slow-motion shots. They're getting really cheesy and though they work well to signal heightened points in the action, I feel like it's getting overused. Almost everything else was amazing, I loved the characters (Tommy is his fantastically ambiguous and enigmatic self of course) and Alfie Solomons absolutely won by heart in this series. Ada and Polly get a lot of screen time (but I actually wish it had been more) and are both great. I'm not sure how I felt about Adrian Brody as Luca Changretta, seeing as his entire personality was confined to chewing a matchstick and wearing fancy suits, and his accent seemed a bit too much to me, but he made for a disposable unambiguously bad villain. I very much liked where the last episode left off, hinting at some major exciting and duplicitous political machinations from Tommy. I really love how utterly unpredictable he is, which is why I actually didn't like Grace and don't mind her being gone, he was always predictable when she was around, but now he's gone off into some sort of heartless, ruthless emotional hinterland. If there's one thing this series made clear, it's that Tommy Shelby (and the rest of the family too probably) will not rest until he is in his grave, and I can't wait to see more of what he gets up to on this side of it.