In the Bleak Midwinter
“My name is Tommy Shelby, and today I’m going to kill a man,” Thus opens Episode 6, Season 2 of Peaky Blinders. I frequently consider this one of the best episodes of television ever made: it’s packed with two seasons worth of well-developed characters all working their own angles, all with their own machinations, all culminating at the Epsom Derby. Nobody’s plans are better laid and meticulous than Tommy Shelby, but even he suspects he might die by the day’s end.
After some truly show stopping scenes in of themselves (Tommy and Alfie, Michael and Polly), Tommy Shelby is thrown when Grace arrives to tell Tommy that she is pregnant, the child is his, and she loves him. The pure shock on Cillian Murphy’s face is matched only by his determination to execute his plan perfectly, and live through it. As usual with Tommy, it does execute flawlessly, and just as he takes a single minute to relish in his victory over his longtime rival, Sabini, Tommy is taken by the Red Right Hand.
As the scene opens with Tommy and his assassins in the grey and earth toned English countryside, we are exposed to the deep, and wide range that Cillian Murphy brings. With an entreaty for a final smoke from Tommy’s fellow veterans of the Great War, his voice and head shaking as he utters barely above a whisper.
“so fucking close…”
He turns, opening his eyes to the heavens as he confesses his love for Grace. Here, his acceptance of his fate explodes into a seething anger. Tommy’s face is bloodied, scarred, and his jaw defiantly clenched.
“Nearly got FUCKING EVERYTHING!”
The cock of a gun reminds Tommy of where he is, and a deeply sad acceptance washes over him, and us. He is pushed to his knees, closes his eyes, and he whispers.
“In the bleak Midwinter”
I will never forget the feelings I had when I first saw this scene and to this day, I still get goosebumps. Were they really about to Ned Stark their series lead? How the hell can Tommy, unarmed, on his knees, overcome three armed assassins? Peaky Blinders has a lot of undercurrents and themes, but none more strong this episode than Contradiction. Tommy is a merciless killer, and a war hero. He wears expensive suits, lives in a mansion, but from a “low, gypsy” family. He’s smart and calculated, but prone to emotional errors. As an audience we can’t help but cheer for him and his family, though they are objectively not great people.
Finally, Tommy Shelby is a master manipulator, and this episode is his magnum opus. He uses everyone around him for his own ends often with little regard to their wellbeing. He justifies it to himself, but he’s still using them like pieces on a Go board. Even with all his planning and manipulation, I can see now way out for him here. Opening the episode, Tommy himself wrote an insurance plan of sorts, in case of his own demise. So when one of his would-be assassins quickly kicks Tommy into his grave, executes the other two assassins, and delivers a message from Winston Churchill himself, I literally stood out of my seat.
“He has a job for you, we will be in touch”
Tommy climbs out of his grave, trips in a shallow ditch, screams into the Earth itself, fists clenching the dirt. He is in shock, and so are we. What the hell just happened? As he walks, his face morphs from shock, to a mixture of relief and sadness. His eyes dart quickly to the horizon, exhales, and we see that Tommy we are familiar with, the angry one, the calculating one. He knows he quite literally dodged a bullet here, but his future is far from certain.
Therein lies the final contradiction. Tommy Shelby is a master manipulator and Tommy Shelby is a puppet, raging against his fate, but a puppet nonetheless.
“My name is Tommy Shelby, and today I’m going to kill a man.” But now we know that Tommy didn’t pull that string. Someone else did.
