Peaky Blinders Season Five

This is one of those shows that is so lavish in its setting, so powerfully, even gigantically acted, that the story itself can sometimes get lost, and that is what happened this season. Peaky Blinders is a series that often engrosses me even as I find myself mid-way (or more) into the season thinking...when is it going to get going?

Spoilers do lurk ahead....

While the various seasons of Peaky Blinders have been uneven offerings, season four was likely the very best, and season five, while the most bold, a series on top of its game, was among the weakest. It was also the one season in which Tommy Shelby seemed to come out a loser, with his personal life a mess, the dam that held the horrors back inside his drug-addicted brain cracking, and his most ambitious plot ever crumbled around him in a spectacular clusterflub of disastrous proportions.

Usually the seasons end on an upnote of some kind, either victory achieved or seemingly certain doom averted, but here everyone's favorite gang of Irish gypsies seemed to get knocked down and did not get back up so fast.

And that final...shot? What was going on there?

So it'll likely be two more years til we see another season of Peaky Blinders, and I think they owe us one sooner than that. They should have tacked more onto this season, actually, as watching it made me feel like someone had forgotten to include the final episode. There was no completion here, only a dangling question mark.

Great to see the gang again, but not a great installment this time. About a C+ for plot, an A for acting, an A+ for setting, potent music, but there was too much flash and not enough substance in six episodes that felt more like a soap opera than a drama.