I think all I/you/us need is to rewatch Peaky Blinders just to forget about immortal man

​This is my first time watching Peaky Blinders. I'm on season 1 episode 2.

I’m sick today, so decided to write an essay to distract myself. Much has been made on how SK can’t write women characters. I think this is mostly true, but he really came through on Linda. Of all the wives, she has the most consist characterization, arc and motivations.

Season 3: She is characterized as religious, smart, compassionate and someone who believes the ends justify the means.

When we meet Linda we can see why she and Arthur work. Arthur is in need of saving and is weak enough to let a smart woman like Linda take the lead. We see sweet scenes between the two of them. Linda comforts Arthur when is wedding speech is disrupted. Arthur is thrilled about being a father and very tender with her when she tells him. Linda tells Tommy about how she hopes the California coast will wash away the war for Arthur.

Linda is a dynamic character. She takes action. She gets the women to walk out on Good Friday and negotiates with Tommy for a better percentage on the robbery. We also see she isn’t naive when she tells Tommy that Arthur believes the robbery is their last job, but she knows Tommy will never stop.

Season 4: She is still religious, smart compassionate, and believes the ends justify the means. Now we see that she is feeling disillusioned by the Shelbys, but also turning a blind eye to her own hypocrisy.

Linda is still trying to save Arthur’s soul. She and Polly devise a plan that has Linda distracting Arthur with sex, so that he’ll miss the family vote determining that hired hitman Aberhama Gold not Arthur will deliver the fatal shot to Luca Changretta.

She feeling increasing trapped and disillusioned. Arthur is falling back into substances. She doesn’t have an intellectual outlet because the Shelby name is prohibiting her from getting a teaching job. She turns to what she consider sinful, drugs and working at the betting shop. She justifies these as temporary coping outlets while turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy.

Linda has two lines that stick out to me this season. The first is prophetic. At John’s funeral, she tells Ada: The only way you all will leave this place is in a cloud of smoke. The 2nd is when Lizzie announces her pregnancy, Linda says “Congratulations, you’ve won the raffle at last” . It’s the sort of judgmental, bitchy line you expect from a bible thumper, but it’s so true you wished someone had had the courage to tell Lizzie it in a kinder more tactful way. Lizzie needed to know Tommy wasn’t a prize and she was in for a world of hurt.

Season 5: She is still religious and smart, but is becoming more self aware as well as aware that Tommy isn’t standing in the way of Arthur’s salvation. Arthur is.

At the meeting after the 1929 stock market crash, Arthur rolls over like a dog for Tommy. Linda’s eyes are opened that Arthur is the problem. Arthur has to want to change.

At the same meeting, Linda childishly mimics Tommy when she says “Arthur, control you’re wife” I dunno Linda’s lines just feel more human where as some of Grace’s and Lizzie’s feel like actors reciting lines.

Linda’s finally had enough. She talks about divorce with Lizzie. What’s great about this conversation is that Linda doesn’t just confide that Arthur is the problem; she doesn’t like who she is with Arthur. It’s very self aware and puts responsibility on herself. Refreshing for a love interest.

At the end of the season, Linda shows compassion can not be at the expense of her self respect. Arthur is caressing her face and telling her they’ll get on the next boat to America. Linda delivers her most brutal lines. She tells him he can stay there in his mind and the war . She’s glad she didn’t shoot him because killing would be a kindness.

Season 6: She smart, compassionate, believes the ends justify the means, but is no longer naive.

She agrees to take dirty money for her foundation in exchange for helping Arthur. From the bad, good will come. She now knows she can lead a horse to water, but can’t make it drink. Arthur has to do the work( if even possible) to save himself.

Grace: I loved her in the first season. She had a life outside of Tommy. She was motivated by revenge, but then torn between duty and love. I was sold on why she and Tommy would be bonded so soon when they killed the Ira agents together. Both of them were traumatized by violence but also perpetrators of it. Tommy was attracted to the fact that she didn’t let herself be completely defined by her trauma. She was attracted to his softer side under the hard exterior.

Then it fell apart in seasons 2 and 3. I think Grace was still characterized as her feisty self as evidenced by conversations with Tommy, May, Polly and Tatiana, but she was given absolutely nothing to do other than fawn over Tommy and then get fridged. The audience is supposed to be sold on their enemies to soulmates story, but that’s hard to do when Grace seems more like a trope than an actual person. A couple of bits of dialogue solidify this for me. In the season 1 finale, Grace tells Tommy she loves him. The way the actress delivers the line is beautiful. We believe it because we see her building to this realization all season. She tells Tommy the same thing in the season 2 finale, but this time it comes across as an actress delivering a line because we have seen none of her turmoil this season.

Lizzie: If Grace became a symbol-trope, Lizzie suffered from this times a billion. She was the whore to Madonna, but it was never clear why she chose such a hard path along the way.

Season 1: When we meet her , Tommy tricks her into revealing she is still a working girl while engaged to John . She gets angry and tells him John is twice the man he is.

Season 2: In the opener, we see her asking Tommy not to pay her for sex because somehow she has caught feelings. Later in the season, he makes her his secretary after she tells him she’s been taking typing classes. Ok, I can see how she would be flattered by that, but at the end of the season he gets her raped and beaten. She tells John to get out of the life because she doesn’t see in his eyes what she sees in Tommy’s. Neither the attack nor this line are ever addressed again.

Season 3: Soon after Grace’s murder Tommy starts bending Lizzie over the desk. When Tommy tries to pay Lizzie for these encounters she seems offended. We are shown nothing to indicate that there is anything romantic about him sleeping with her. Why is Lizzie offended? Last time we saw them have sex on screen Tommy was disassociating and very mechanically f&cking her from behind.

Season 4: We start the season with Tommy ordering a prostitute in front of Lizzie. In fact, he makes it known she wasn’t even special as a prostitute because he has a number of regulars. Later he gets her pregnant while imagining a past love. She is fully aware of this. He refuses to see her during her pregnancy.

Season 5: Tommy and Lizzie have married. It’s shown to be mostly unhappy. Tommy is always using substances and cheating. She strikes a deal with him that he can cheat on her, but not in the house. He also has to confide in her. Interestingly there is a scene where he tries to confide in her about his PTSD, but she blows him off cause he has been shitty to her before that. Communication goes both ways , Lizzie. There is one scene where Tommy confides in Lizzie that he still wants nice things (like her), but one ray of hope in a sea of misery hardly seems like motivation to stay emotionally engaged in the marriage.

Lizzie does deliver one bit of dialogue frequently sited by fans: “You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you take.” It’s a good line , but something about the way the actress delivers the line just doesn’t should like an actual person just an actress delivering dialogue. I know it’s supposed to sound badass, but to me just sounds pathetic since it’s be telegraphed since season 2 that anything she takes involving Tommy won’t be worth it.

Season 6: Straight misery . Tommy’s sobered up, but is dead inside according to Lizzie. Also he’s still whoring around. He abandons her while their daughter is dying as well as at the funeral. Within days he cheats on her with a Nazi. Rock bottom is far enough down for her so she finally leaves. Tommy lets her take Charlie so her transformation to Madonna is complete. We’ve hardly seen her mothering this whole show, but ok.

It’s really hard to connect to Lizzie. She seems like she is supposed to be an everywoman dealing with what a lot of women deal with ,an emotionally unavailable partner, but shit just happens to her. She never does anything or has clear motivations.

I dunno the acting by Tommy’s and Lizzie’s actors was really over the top this season. I think it just the material. I was cringing when Lizzie delivered the line about having the combination but never being let in and then jumping on top of Tommy. Then the delivery when Tommy was in the Gypsy graveyard. Just seemed like characters again rather than actual humans.

Esme: She seems to have a great moral compass . She warns Tommy that he can lose the family to greed. She raises concerns about John having the weight of the murder of innocents on his conscience in season 3, but she is just never developed or given anything to do.

TLDR: SK is often accused of writing women characters poorly. Linda is the exception among the Shelby wives. Her arc from wanting to save Arthur to realizing Arthur has to put in the work to save himself is logical without reducing her to a stereotypical religious nut.

Can thomas shelby and Alfie Solomons take them and and any of the other villains/big fish down pre-LCN/commission era.

As for the images, iykyk.

💔

He was never like that with any other woman.

Hello I am a senior in high school and have been told I need to have a quote this is one of my favorite shows, any recommendations thanks

Just finished the series + immortal man, what’s this I keep hearing about a new show? I can’t really find anything set in stone online.

I made this in the early months of 2024 (actually it took me about 6 months of working most of my time every day on it, before I knew what AI was - no ai used in this, but today i just like most of you augment every single function with it to get better and better - but this - i feel better viewing this than I did the long awaited final so called movie.) Peaky blinders to me ended after final series aired and left open - this is more of a re-invention and alternative series of events..

I'm watching Peaky Blinders for the first time, and I don't know much about Irish history or the political situation at the time, so I had a question.

Grace is Irish, and Campbell is from Belfast (so he's Irish as far as I understand), but both seem to be working against the IRA and trying to stop them. I thought the IRA was fighting for Irish independence, so I assumed Irish people would generally support them.

Were Grace and Campbell supposed to be loyal to Britain instead? Was it common for Irish people to oppose the IRA back then, or is there more historical context that I'm missing?

Sorry if this is an obvious question, I genuinely don't know much about this period of history and was just curious.

EDIT: Thank you so much for answering. It started to make sense now...I'll def dig deep into this part of Irish history.

Immortal Man already failed the idea of Peaky going on without Cillian Murphy

no Tommy no Peaky

PODEMOS HABLAR DE LO GUAPO QUE ES JOHN SHELBY???? Es que dios mío ese hombre agh Marta su exmujer y Esme que suertudas fueron, de verdad 😩 es que a mí el me tiene mal con esos hermosos ojos que tiene y Dios mío cuando sonríe uffff me desmayo por ese hombre y su risa me tiene mal. Y ni hablemos de cómo está físicamente. 🫦 la escena de cuando él y Tommy y Arthur van a donde los rusos y los desnudan a John y Arthur dios mío como John flexiona los brazos madre mía y sus pecas en la cara madre mía. Cuando se puso a consolar a Lizzie que tierno lo amo y encima adoro su humor como se pone a reírse por cosas random y a contar chistes. Me gustaría saber más de su pasado y el cuando fue a la guerra y antes de ir y cuando era niño.