While most Netflix series tend to drop every other season, for fans of the BBC drama Peaky Blinders, the length of time between seasons is an agonising test of delayed gratification. With its cinematic visuals and impeccable acting, not to mention the kind of script that makes dialogue both believable and something of a generator of quotes to be used by fans out in public discourse, it makes sense that creating such a thing takes time. But with the fifth season having wrapped in 2019, waiting for the sixth and final season was a challenging time, one that saw the cast grapple with the pandemic and delays to filming. Thankfully, the sixth season lived up to the hype and now, fans are expecting a movie to follow.
The BBC had long announced that the series would wrap up with the sixth season, but series creator Steven Knight has always expressed his desire to see the story “continue in another form,” namely that of a film that’s set to begin production in 2023. In an interview with Variety, he expressed: “I am going to write the feature which will be set in and shot in Birmingham. And that will probably be the sort of end of the road for Peaky Blinders as we know it.”
Before we get the film though, it appears the BBC is keen to test out the waters. Series director Anthony Byrne has confirmed that the season six finale will bid farewell to the beloved characters with a feature-length instalment. “It’s such a Peaky Blinders thing to do for the last hurrah,” he told Radio Times, revealing the last episode’s total runtime comes close to a staggering 81 minutes.
“It feels very, very different to the rest of the season. It feels very, very different to anything we’ve done before. It’s very epic in scope. It feels like a film – it’s a kind of dry run for the feature film.”
Previously, the star’s leading star, Cillian Murphy (who plays Tommy Shelby) told Men’s Health that he feels the sense of climax that comes with ending a series as celebrated as that of Peaky Blinders, and is already feeling some big emotions to coincide with the last season. “There is so much good in [Thomas Shelby], but then there’s also this conflict and this violence and this trauma,” he said of the character.
Knight had said that the BBC drama would conclude with the first air raid siren in Birmingham circa 1939, bookending the story of “a family between two wars”. But he revealed to Empire in an interview earlier this year that those plans had since changed. “It was always Britain between the wars – how the lesson from one war was not learned and was repeated,” he explained. “It’s also the end of empire: we enter the Second World War and by the end of it, there is no empire, really. But I…have revised the scope of what it is.”
He added, “It will now go into and beyond the Second World War. Because I just think the energy that is out there in the world for this. I want to keep it going, and I want to see how this can progress beyond that. I think of this sixth series as the end of the beginning.”
So far, all that’s known about the film is that it will be the “untold story that happened in the Second World War” involving the crime syndicate that is the Peaky Blinders. While it might be some way off, there’s still the series to appease your binge-watching needs. Currently, Peaky Blinders is airing via BBC One and BBC iPlayer, however Netflix has announced the sixth season will land not he streaming platform on June 10, 2022.
